Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition

[acidsex]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

[bratao]

i Will down the studio.
But the Media encoder present in this site look like its pretty old..
in about: Microsoft 1995-2002

[killerhex]

when or when will it available to download

[acidsex]

I dont know but I definitely hope soon. I would love to see what VC-1 improvements have been made.

[GmorG McRoth]

Me too, And WMES has few interesting features like "Segment-based re-encoding" sounds nice (sounds kinda like Zones). yeah I can hardly wait.

[siddharthagandhi]

Mad nice....VC-1 is coming soon thats for sure

is there supposed to be a download link there?

[zambelli]

Mad nice....VC-1 is coming soon thats for sure
is there supposed to be a download link there?
Patience. :) The website is slowly but surely populating with VC-1 related articles. The download link should be coming soon too.

[dohcmark8]

Define 'soon'.... :p

[diogen]

I bet it will be before May 1st.:)
More accurately, in less than a week: by next Monday we should have it.

Diogen.

[siddharthagandhi]

how u know?

[diogen]

I don't, just a guess, have no connection with MS whatsoever.
As I mentioned here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=109591&page=8), a weekly column allows for the WMP11 to be offered for download by the time it is printed.
Hence, if this would be published a week later WMP11 would probably be available for download.
Therefore, we won't have to wait more than a week.
Unless something happens :sly:

C'mon, who says I can't dream;)
I have a bunch of 14-16GB files waiting to be encoded. I don't want to buy a new hard drive...

Diogen.

[siddharthagandhi]

I want to see how it works with 2 mbps bitrate. I'm seriously thinking about ditching Nero Digital, doesn't seem that great anymore. Before it seemed so good, and now that I configured Xvid properly its almost as good as Nero Digital.

[killerhex]

were they waiting for approval of VC-1 by SMPTE! to start making a new encoding program

[lcx]

This seems to be directed towards high bitrate video not for the DVD backup population out here. So it might be little disappointing to some folks.

But its good know that Microsoft is finally releasing an update to the encoder after all these years.

[diogen]

We are almost there, but still "no cigar".
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/apr06/04-24WMEncoderStudioPR.mspx

And those posts of Ben Waggoner:

"As of tomorrow (Friday), you'll be able to download this tool, which will enable you to make VC-1 in WMV
with some of the same tools the studios use to make HD DVD. This will give folks a great chance to get a sense of what VC-1 is capable of."

"FYI, the new Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition Beta that'll be available for download sometime today
will include the advanced scaling and dithering modes we provide to the studios, so you can give them a shot yourself."

As seen here
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=671348&page=2&pp=30

Diogen.

[killerhex]

diogen i cant go to the second link you posted

[siddharthagandhi]

Today is Saturday. Where is the download link?

[GmorG McRoth]

as I see it, never trust in promises when it comes to software. Ahead had release some special suprise (something with AAC) tlast week and now they postponed it to next week, and gues what? I'm ready to bet 5 monopoly dollars that they will postpone it even further. There is not meny companies that keep their terms anymore. So we need to hang in there and at the end they will release it... sooner or later.

[diogen]

diogen i cant go to the second link you postedDon't know why. Do a search on benwaggoner in the HDTV section of AVS Forum.

Diogen.

[Danisan]

It's still not available. Come on MS, give us some loot!

[HookedOnTV]

They've updated the page with this:

"A link to Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition Beta will be posted on this page as soon as it becomes available."

[dohcmark8]

Well thats new...

Anyway still waiting.

C'mon Microsoft.. if you keep me waiting too long I'll just do all my encodes with x264/aac instead of VC-1/wma pro. :thanks:

[GmorG McRoth]

Windows media player 11 beta is out (on softpedia (http://www.softpedia.com//progDownload/Microsoft-Windows-Media-Player-11-Download-39801.html#download_locations)) So I could gues encoder will be out soon too?

[zambelli]

Windows media player 11 beta is out (on softpedia (http://www.softpedia.com//progDownload/Microsoft-Windows-Media-Player-11-Download-39801.html#download_locations)) So I could gues encoder will be out soon too?
Obviously that's a leaked build. Proceed at your own risk.

[GmorG McRoth]

Damn, I hope somone will leak encoder too.

[siddharthagandhi]

Softpedia has Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition listed as well but with the absence of download links.

[diogen]

My understanding is the leaked WMP11 has the "just DLL" for Advanced Profile VBR (I can see it where previously there was not this option).
Haven't tried yet.

Diogen.

[siddharthagandhi]

Oh its VBR? No wonder my CBR encodes don't work...

[siddharthagandhi]

And by the way, I have tested this version and the encodes appear to have no improvement over the old WMV 9 Main Profile. Could it be this bundle contains a non-completed codec?...or are those results the actual capabilities of the WVC1 codec?

[zambelli]

And by the way, I have tested this version and the encodes appear to have no improvement over the old WMV 9 Main Profile. Could it be this bundle contains a non-completed codec?...or are those results the actual capabilities of the WVC1 codec?
Hold your horses, everyone. I'm not gonna comment on the leaked WMP build because I can't vouch for any files that are in there.

After installing the real WMP beta, the WMV9 Advanced Profile that shows up in WME9 should be the updated WVC1 encoder. All encoding modes should be available.

This is probably the wrong thread for this anyway.

[diogen]

And by the way, I have tested this version and the encodes appear to have no improvement over the old WMV 9 Main Profile...Holy! How did you manage to encode and compare in half an hour?

Diogen.

[siddharthagandhi]

Its a short clip. Only ~2 minutes long.

And it is the true WVC1 codec, according to MediaInfo. But the results don't show any improvements. In fact, Main Profile seems a little better (i might be seeing things).

But yes, this is off-topic, so I'll cease my posting in this thread as of now.

[siddharthagandhi]

I have an on-topic question:
In the system requirements:

"Video Card Requirement: 256 MB video memory or higher for high definition encoding
Recommendation: 128 MB video memory or higher for standard definition encoding"

I thought video cards didn't matter in video encoding. Then why do they have that as a system requirement?

[diogen]

I never thought that PR is MS' strongest asset, but saying that the launch
(non-existent so far) of the VC-1 compliant codec was f**ked up
would be as close to the reality as it gets, IMHO.

Diogen.

[DarkNite]

I thought video cards didn't matter in video encoding. Then why do they have that as a system requirement?

For the same reason fft3dGPU has system requirements: hardware acceleration of certain functions.

It's stated in bold print on the site.

[Latexxx]

This thing is starting to turn into vapourware ;)

[Doom9]

This thing is starting to turn into vapourware Where have we seen this before? Vista anyone? ;)

[siddharthagandhi]

My Windows Media Player 11 Report:

The build has compatibility problems with ffdshow. It causes severe problems with Windows Explorer (and clicking on media files) and playback of the files. Without ffdshow, it works perfectly fine.

The audio codec, according to what I have heard and read, is a great codec and poses serious competition to AAC codecs and Ogg Vorbis and Lame.

The video codec, as I have tested, shows almost no improvement over Main Profile OR the old Advanced Profile codec. Note: This may be because it is a beta version, only the final version and official beta will indicate the truth about the codec's capabilities. GmorG McRoth, another member, has also tested samples, and confirms that it is inferior to x264 and xvid and nero digital avc's quality to compression ratio. Maybe it has something to do with my encoder (Nic's WM Encoder) or something of the sort, so if it does, and you get better results, then please notify me in a post or PM or something about what you did to achieve those results.

Personally, I really like the new look and design of Windows Media Player. It looks so hot and cool and slick. Its one of the best-looking players out there. And it plays back most media files without a problem.

The best surprise I have found out so far is it's lack of memory usage and FAST AND I MEAN REALLY FAST startup time. It took less than a second to start it up, which is a BIG improvement over other players and the old Windows Media Player 10. And it takes up a very low amount of memory. This is definetly one of the best things about this new Windows Media Player 11 build.

Update #1: GmorG McRoth has discovered that a problem that has existed since WM Player 7 still exists, and has not been corrected in this new version.

"when you put player on second monitor and put it on fullscreen mode and then click on anything on monitor 1 it goes back to windowed mode
this makes this player unusable in multitasking envoirment"

[zambelli]

The video codec, as I have tested, shows almost no improvement over Main Profile OR the old Advanced Profile codec. Note: This may be because it is a beta version, only the final version and official beta will indicate the truth about the codec's capabilities. GmorG McRoth, another member, has also tested samples, and confirms that it is inferior to x264 and xvid and nero digital avc's quality to compression ratio. Maybe it has something to do with my encoder (Nic's WM Encoder) or something of the sort, so if it does, and you get better results, then please notify me in a post or PM or something about what you did to achieve those results.
You haven't really told us anything about your testing methodology, so I can't really comment on your results either.

Based on my own testing, I can tell you that you should be seeing improvements in quality (2-pass VBR mode) and size (1-pass VBR mode) over the old WMV9 Main Profile implementation. Note that Advanced Profile allows for many tweaks, as documented in http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/codecadvancedsettings.aspx.

Keep in mind that WMP11 updates both Main Profile (WMV3) and Advanced Profile (WVC1) encoders, so for true evidence of improvement you should be comparing them to the old WMP9 or WMP10 versions of WMV3.

"when you put player on second monitor and put it on fullscreen mode and then click on anything on monitor 1 it goes back to windowed mode
this makes this player unusable in multitasking envoirment"
I can't repro that on my computer. When I put WMP in full screen on secondary monitor, it stays in full screen regardless of my actions on the first monitor.

[zambelli]

Heads up: I've started a new thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=111275)for WMV9/VC-1 AP discussions. This thread here should remain focused on the Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition software.

And no, it's not vapourware. It will be released.

[benwaggoner]

Heads up: I've started a new thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=111275)for WMV9/VC-1 AP discussions. This thread here should remain focused on the Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition software.

And no, it's not vapourware. It will be released.
To second that, I'm working on that product, and yes, it will be released, and soonish. We had a release process issue, but we should get something out in the near future (I actually have a date now, but I learned my lesson on sharing dates at NAB, when I gave 600 people my email asking them to ping me if they couldn't find the link. They did...).

The good news is that the release delay let us refresh the beta build with a lot of enhancements and improvements, so the beta you'll be getting is a lot better than the beta I demoed at NAB.

[benwaggoner]

I have an on-topic question:
In the system requirements:

"Video Card Requirement: 256 MB video memory or higher for high definition encoding
Recommendation: 128 MB video memory or higher for standard definition encoding"

I thought video cards didn't matter in video encoding. Then why do they have that as a system requirement?
There's some cool real-time preview technology in Studio Edition that wants a pretty fast GPU. I've spot tested with decent 64 MB cards and they generally worked pretty well.

Bear in mind that Job 1 for this tool is professional grade HD encoding in the studio environment.

[acidsex]

Ben, why not go ahead and give the date especially for those us who have made a habit of daily checking out the studio page every day for over the last month? At least then those of us that want to submerge ourselves into an enormous of testing will at least have an idea on when to set aside that free time. It is summer and I would rather be having fun rather than sitting at home waiting for Studio Encoder to magically appear.

The reason I am waiting daily is I need to get right on the ball for a project that requires VC1 streams and the current WM9E VC1 isnt working out to well for me.

So how about that date? :)

[benwaggoner]

Ben, why not go ahead and give the date especially for those us who have made a habit of daily checking out the studio page every day for over the last month? At least then those of us that want to submerge ourselves into an enormous of testing will at least have an idea on when to set aside that free time. It is summer and I would rather be having fun rather than sitting at home waiting for Studio Encoder to magically appear.

The reason I am waiting daily is I need to get right on the ball for a project that requires VC1 streams and the current WM9E VC1 isnt working out to well for me.

So how about that date? :)
It's a target date, but we've had one before, so I'm not going to say what it is until all the ducks are in a row. 600 emails :)...

If you need to make a WMV file with a "WVC1" stream, you can use the new beta DMO today with WMV9 Advanced Profile. Studio Edition will give you (limited, in the beta) segment reencoding features, but for 2-pass encoding the results should be the same, or even better with the DMO, since the beta won't have GUI for all the Reg Key settings.

[lazyn00b]

@Ben Waggoner: Well, since WME Studio is still "in the lab" ;), so to speak, I'd like to make a feature request. Is there any chance you could include MPG or TS file format as an output option, with AC3 input "passed through" instead of re-encoded? This would take us a long way towards being able to produce VC-1 streams that are easily authored to HD DVD or Blu-Ray later, and yet are still perfectly playable on a PC in the meantime. Of course, it would help greatly if all necessary settings (even presets!) were available in WME Studio to ensure that HD DVD or Blu-Ray compatible streams are created. :thanks:

[diogen]

... since the beta won't have GUI for all the Reg Key settings.While we are at this, would it be possible to provide some sort of "best practices" parameter set?
It is getting really hard to navigate through those.

Diogen.

[benwaggoner]

@Ben Waggoner: Well, since WME Studio is still "in the lab" ;), so to speak, I'd like to make a feature request. Is there any chance you could include MPG or TS file format as an output option, with AC3 input "passed through" instead of re-encoded? This would take us a long way towards being able to produce VC-1 streams that are easily authored to HD DVD or Blu-Ray later, and yet are still perfectly playable on a PC in the meantime. Of course, it would help greatly if all necessary settings (even presets!) were available in WME Studio to ensure that HD DVD or Blu-Ray compatible streams are created. :thanks:
While it won't be in the beta, the plan is to have VC-1 elementary stream support with proper constraints for HD DVD at least, in a release this year.

Can you give me some more details about why you'd want to see .ts support in particular, instead of a .vc1 elementary stream?

[benwaggoner]

While we are at this, would it be possible to provide some sort of "best practices" parameter set?
It is getting really hard to navigate through those.

What form would you like that information in?

We definitely want to share encoding best practices with the community.

[lazyn00b]

While it won't be in the beta, the plan is to have VC-1 elementary stream support with proper constraints for HD DVD at least, in a release this year.

Can you give me some more details about why you'd want to see .ts support in particular, instead of a .vc1 elementary stream?

I'm glad you asked! Basically, what I want to do is have all my videos on my MCE box in a format that is directly playable, yet containing streams that can be simply de-muxed and authored to HD DVD or Blu-Ray when the occasion demands it. For example, I could have a hundreds of movies or tv shows encoded very efficiently with VC-1 or H.264 (with original AC3 soundtracks) stored on a huge hard drive array for my personal viewing pleasure, and then when my dad wanted to see a season of "Alias" or whatever, I could quickly author the whole season to one or two HD DVD discs for playback on his Toshiba HD-A1.

The key to this whole thing is not just being able to encode the elementary streams properly, but also to have a flexible container format for archiving content. TS or MPG seem to make sense because they both (supposedly) support H.264, VC-1, and AC3 or DTS streams and are also likely to be "importable" into HD DVD or Blu-Ray authoring apps. Note that Uleads Movie Factory 5 already accepts TS files containing MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio for authoring, usually without re-encoding.

[diogen]

What form would you like that information in?
We definitely want to share encoding best practices with the community.Although you reiterated on more than one occasion that Studio
is for professionals to create transparent to movie streams,
I think the absolute majority that will try this tool does not
have access to 250Mbps D5's. It will be more like DVD-level MPEG's
to TS and equivalents: let say 8 to 18 Mbps.
The fact that these streams a compressed already shouldn't make that
much of a difference: the encode has to be transparent to a less
perfect original, not unlike encoding some old movies.

With VC-1 claiming to be up to 3 times more efficient than MPEG
and Amir's recent claim that even 10Mbps can provide transparency to
some of the D5's, 2 to 6 Mbps VC-1 encodings would be of most interest.

Last time I looked, there are 22 parameters that can be set not
counting bitrate, profile level and type (VBR<->CBR).

Assuming we use AP (the only profile Studio will support) and leaving
aside the audio part, would it be possible to create the
equivalent to Compression Optimization Type registry key (i.e. key combination)
for types of material: fast vs. slow (e.g. Bond vs. Capote, KillBill vs. Crash),
old (grainy) vs. new (Fistful of Dollars vs. Geisha, Pink Panther vs. Riddick), etc.
I understand that finding the right combination is more art than science, but offereing
a starting point and the direction to go would help a lot.

Can you provide the parameter set your team used (not counting the
hand-tunung part) to encode a particular movie? That would be a good start.

Diogen.

[benwaggoner]

Although you reiterated on more than one occasion that Studio
is for professionals to create transparent to movie streams,
I think the absolute majority that will try this tool does not
have access to 250Mbps D5's. It will be more like DVD-level MPEG's to TS and equivalents: let say 8 to 18 Mbps.
The fact that these streams a compressed already shouldn't make that much of a difference: the encode has to be transparent to a less perfect original, not unlike encoding some old movies.
I'm sure folks will experiment with it for, but it's not what we're building for. Not to say that there's not an important market for recompression, but we're really aiming for HD DVD authoring as the #1 feature for 1.0. We certainly will be supporting other scenarios, but there's a lot of stuff that works in WME today that we're likely not to get to post 1.0 for Studio Edition. We're a much deeper product, but much less broad.

I'm pretty sure there won't be any way to use .ts files as source in the iniital beta, FWIW. Hopefully in a later version.


Absolutely. Again, not in the beta, but we're looking at the right way to provide groups of settings for particular uses, and making it easy to manage those for the overall project, and different segments. And we're hoping on feedback from the community on the best way to implement that.

Can you provide the parameter set your team used (not counting the hand-tunung part) to encode a particular movie? That would be a good start.

Agreed. Although the codec version being used for HD DVD is a little different from what's in the new beta DMO, and is in very active development. One great thing to do (which has already been happening to some degree) is to share settings and result, and let us all collaborate on figuring out the right settings. With segment reencoding there will be almost infinite variations on how a particular source can be encoded - I could see some fun threads trying to find the best optimizations for a particular clip.

[diogen]

Thanks, Ben.
I'm looking forward to the release of the Studio beta.

Out of curiousity, how large in your estimate is the crowd that
1. has D5's that need to be compressed, and
2. hasn't contacted you yet to get their hands on the tools you are providing to the post houses?
My first guess would be this crowd is non-existent.
But you offer a _free_professional_ tool that has D5 owners as primary target.
Or is this for those few that have but wouldn't want to advertise their interest in VC-1?

Thanks again.
Diogen.

[benwaggoner]

Thanks, Ben.
I'm looking forward to the release of the Studio beta.

Out of curiousity, how large in your estimate is the crowd that
1. has D5's that need to be compressed, and
2. hasn't contacted you yet to get their hands on the tools you are providing to the post houses?
My first guess would be this crowd is non-existent.
The tools we're providing are to a handful of Tier 1 post houses supporting HD DVD that have the resources to have a multi-person full-time team on VC-1 encoding. Way more raw XML file editing than a typical compressionist is used to :).

Basically, Studio Edition is intended to be a productized GUI version of the above in the 1.0 time frame. It'll do other stuff as well, certainly.

[pwimmer]

And when will the Studio Edition Encoder be released? The web site says "coming soon" for quite a long time... What is the reason the Studio Edition Encoder has been delayed, will there be improvments in the codec (compared to the codec which ships with WMP 11)?

[diogen]

Today is not a good day for a release: 6/6/6.
Not sure today is a good day to even ask this question. :)

Diogen.

[benwaggoner]

And when will the Studio Edition Encoder be released? The web site says "coming soon" for quite a long time... What is the reason the Studio Edition Encoder has been delayed, will there be improvments in the codec (compared to the codec which ships with WMP 11)?
I don't think the codec will be much different from the WMP 11version in Studio Edition beta, although it'll certianly be improved by 1.0.

The delay was due to a glitch in our release process, which hopefully has been resolved. The good news is we forked the beta again due to the delay, so we've got a lot of enhancements in what's coming out compared to what would hace originally been the beta.

I don't have a confirmed date yet, but it's soon.

[toke]

I don't have a confirmed date yet, but it's soon.
For beta release: within this year?
For official release: within this decade?

[benwaggoner]

For beta release: within this year?
For official release: within this decade?
We've committed to have several features avaiable in 2006 that aren't in the beta, FWIW.

[mpgxsvcd]

Are we going to see WME9 pro this week? Just thought I would ask. It looks like people are already loosing interest in WMV9 advanced profile. Most of the threads are barely getting one response every day.

[acidsex]

I have to agree. I think MS seriously dropped the ball on the Studio release. We are going on almost 2 months after the announced beta. Studio is quickly turning into Vista.

Still, I am not as jacked to test it as I once was because as we have found out we cant even create streams to be used for HD DVD which is what I thought the whole point of the beta was.


Ill probably buy Pegasys Xpress 4.0 tomorrow and use the H.264 AVc functions (Mainconcept) and see if Xpress 4.0 does any better at encding WMV HD. My point is if Xpress 4.0 can do the same thing that Studio does even with reg hacks, I might as well buy it instead of waiting for some free beta that cant even produce something that I can easily use in HD DVD later.

[benwaggoner]

Ill probably buy Pegasys Xpress 4.0 tomorrow and use the H.264 AVc functions (Mainconcept) and see if Xpress 4.0 does any better at encding WMV HD. My point is if Xpress 4.0 can do the same thing that Studio does even with reg hacks, I might as well buy it instead of waiting for some free beta that cant even produce something that I can easily use in HD DVD later.
Do you want to make WMV HD or HD DVD? Two different formats, and Studio Edition will handle the former.

The point of the beta is really to validate the new UI and pipeline for studio encoding. I know a lot of folks around here would like to use it for other stuff, but let me be upfront and say there's a lot of stuff the Doom9 community won't care about, and other stuff not in there that they'll miss.

[acidsex]

Ben,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I dont mean give you or MS any grief but could you explain what benefits Studio will actually provide? If it doesnt produce HD DVD compatible streams, then seriously why even bother? If all Studio can produce is WMV HD, then it is a waste on MS' part as WME9 already does this.

Again, not trying to dump on MS but seriously, announcements of betas to consumption seriously needs some work. Vista has been pushed back and now the same with Studio. Hell, even the announcement at NAB2005 with Gridiron Software to use grid computing with encoding HD VC1 files has turned out to be nothing more than vaporware.

MS is seriously missing the opportunity for further market penetration and share here by the delays of VC1 authoring. As some have already said that the daily interest is dying down. Frankly, I dont even see the HD DVD/BD market taking off until users can author their own content.

Now if would be useful if Studio would produce streams that could be muxed and authored to HD DVD when auhtoring tools become avaiable. However, I will not hold my breath on waiting for MS to provide such tools and I use the MCE 2003 as an example and the lack of ability to convert MS-DVR recordings. At the time, MS' stance was the tools are there for third parties to do it. And what did we end up with? Sonic's crap that took over six months to get it right. I fear this will happen again with VC1 and HD DVD authoring.

[InsulinJunkie]

MS is seriously missing the opportunity for further market penetration and share here by the delays of VC1 authoring.


On the other hand, I don't think there's been an AVC-compressed title released yet in the U.S. on HD-DVD - just VC-1 (and Sony's early Blu-Ray discs are MPEG2).

[acidsex]

And once that happens, MS will have lost the chance to get a bigger head start. You know that Nero is cooking up HD DVD authoring with their line that will use AVC. Seriously, my point is why not be the first to market with the capabilities and then let third parties fine tune and tweak for the niche groups?

[InsulinJunkie]

And once that happens, MS will have lost the chance to get a bigger head start. You know that Nero is cooking up HD DVD authoring with their line that will use AVC. Seriously, my point is why not be the first to market with the capabilities and then let third parties fine tune and tweak for the niche groups?

It might be a resource issue.

Compared to getting the major players using VC-1 and working with them (which is what has happened thus far), home authoring would be small potatoes by comparison, and probably not going to command the same resources at the moment.

If Nero using AVC in their authoring program is the price to pay for say, Warner Bros., using VC-1 on their HD-DVD and Blu-Ray products, that's a pretty good tradeoff for Microsoft, I would think.

[benwaggoner]

And once that happens, MS will have lost the chance to get a bigger head start. You know that Nero is cooking up HD DVD authoring with their line that will use AVC. Seriously, my point is why not be the first to market with the capabilities and then let third parties fine tune and tweak for the niche groups?
Working with third parties like Nero to get VC-1 support into their HD DVD authoring tools is definitely something we're working on. We don't see our own products as beeing the only way to use VC-1 for authoring. Most prosumer encoding is done integrated into the authoring tool, like in Ulead and Encore.

Getting the spit-n-bailing-wire encoders working for the HD DVD launch was a huge, huge effort. It'll take a little big longer to get all that development properly packaged.

Bear in mind that there aren't any commercially available HD DVD muxers that support VC-1 just yet, so we've got a little time yet :).

[CruNcher]

Bear in mind that there aren't any commercially available HD DVD muxers that support VC-1 just yet, so we've got a little time yet :).

Scenarist 4 ?
Avid DVD by Sonic ?

aren't those able to Mux .evo (programm streams) with VC-1 and H.264 inside ?

[broadband155]

Any further updates on when Studio Edition is coming out? I would really like to be able to encode eight audio channels in WME and was told by an MVP that it would be possible 'shortly' when this comes out but still no sign of it.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/community/newsgroups/WindowsMedia/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsmedia.encoder&mid=60e95643-bb61-4a42-970c-d19716cecbb0
If this isn't going to be out in the next few weeks, does anyone have any idea what else I could use in the meantime? I need to have eight different languages playing out of the eight channels on the same movie and at present, WME can do six with the right settings but not eight until the new one comes along.
It doesn't have to be a windows media movie but I opted for it as I (rightly or wrongly) assumed thatit would be reliable. All I really need is for this movie to play reliably over and over. I am wide open to suggestion in general. It works using the command line combiner 'wavavimux' but this is uncompressed, so the pc has a hard time keeping up with the playback and the file sizes are huge. When I compress this using WME, it 'folds down' the audio to stereo which of course isn't suitable.

[CruNcher]

@broadband155
Matroska should handle what you wan't easily
www.matroska.org

[zambelli]

If this isn't going to be out in the next few weeks, does anyone have any idea what else I could use in the meantime? I need to have eight different languages playing out of the eight channels on the same movie and at present, WME can do six with the right settings but not eight until the new one comes along.
It doesn't have to be a windows media movie but I opted for it as I (rightly or wrongly) assumed thatit would be reliable. All I really need is for this movie to play reliably over and over. I am wide open to suggestion in general. It works using the command line combiner 'wavavimux' but this is uncompressed, so the pc has a hard time keeping up with the playback and the file sizes are huge. When I compress this using WME, it 'folds down' the audio to stereo which of course isn't suitable.
I think you might've misunderstood something. WME9 can handle encoding 8 channel WMA Pro. The wavavimux tool (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/utilities.aspx) is a preprocessing tool for WME. You need to use it to combine 8 mono WAV files into a single multichannel AVI, and then feed that AVI to WME9 and encode to 7.1 WMA Pro.

Multichannel WMA playback works only on XP and will always get folded down to stereo if you only have stereo speakers configured on your system.

I'm curious why you're trying to produce a soundtrack with 8 different languages coming out of each channel, but I can only assume you have a good reason for it. :)

[broadband155]

Thanks for the replies. I am looking at metroska but it will take me a while to understand exactly what it is so that I can really use it. Hopefully it will work.
I use the output from wavavimux as a source of audio for my encode in WME and I do have a PC running XP with 7.1 sound as standard. It is an M Audio revolution 7.1 PCI card. With some help from a Microsoft MVP, I got to the point of being able to get 5.1 discrete channels out but he says that to get 7.1 I will need to wait for the new codecs.
By the way, the application is to be able to have many people watch the video in several languages at once. They use headphones and a selector switch to pick their language.

[zambelli]

With some help from a Microsoft MVP, I got to the point of being able to get 5.1 discrete channels out but he says that to get 7.1 I will need to wait for the new codecs.
I don't think that's correct though. WMA9 Pro already supports 7.1 channels. Could it be a M Audio driver issue?

[vsv]

Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition can produce fully compliant
HD-DVD vc-1 elementary stream for authoring iHD?
Possible use WMA multichannel audio for HD-DVD?

[zambelli]

Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition can produce fully compliant
HD-DVD vc-1 elementary stream for authoring iHD?
Not in Beta1.
Possible use WMA multichannel audio for HD-DVD?
No, that's not a part of the HD-DVD spec.

[acidsex]

zambelli, I asked before and perhaps you did reply or Ben did but if I may ask again, what is the purpose of Studio then if it will not produce VC1 HD DVD streams? Will those streams created with Studio be useable in HD DVD later on through some utility or will they be incompatible?

I hate to keep asking the same line of questions but I am just trying to figure out just use Studio is going to be over what we can do now with Encoder 9 with media player 11 installed minus the segment re-encoding.

If this beta is aimed more towards the professional studios, one would think that they want to be creating compliant HD DVD streams as opposed to testing VC1 for local playback.

Maybe Ben can jump in here and detail it a bit more about the different scenarios for use with Studio and what we can expect of the beta especially since its taking so long to get the gree light.

Thanks and my apologies for being a pain in the ass.

[benwaggoner]

zambelli, I asked before and perhaps you did reply or Ben did but if I may ask again, what is the purpose of Studio then if it will not produce VC1 HD DVD streams? Will those streams created with Studio be useable in HD DVD later on through some utility or will they be incompatible?

I hate to keep asking the same line of questions but I am just trying to figure out just use Studio is going to be over what we can do now with Encoder 9 with media player 11 installed minus the segment re-encoding.

If this beta is aimed more towards the professional studios, one would think that they want to be creating compliant HD DVD streams as opposed to testing VC1 for local playback.

Maybe Ben can jump in here and detail it a bit more about the different scenarios for use with Studio and what we can expect of the beta especially since its taking so long to get the gree light.

Thanks and my apologies for being a pain in the ass.
The main goals of Studio Edition Beta 1 are for us to get feedaback on the user interface, and to demonstrate a UI for setting the advanced interface. There will definitely be limitations in the initiial release, and we'll be up-front that it's not 100% ready for production work in the initial release.

Rest assured that this isn't our only effort to get VC-1 HD DVD encoding out to the masses.

[diogen]

The main goals of Studio Edition Beta 1 are for us to get feedaback on the user interface, and to demonstrate a UI for setting the advanced interface.
We've committed to have several features avaiable in 2006 that aren't in the beta...
The point of the beta is really to validate the new UI and pipeline for studio encoding...
...There will definitely be limitations in the initiial release...
...Rest assured that this isn't our only effort to get VC-1 HD DVD encoding out to the masses
Ben, I have to admit that the evasiveness of your posts has gone through the roof since you joined MS.
I guess this comes with the territory :p

Diogen.

[DarkNite]

I was interested as to whether or not we'll finally be able to use something more than stereo as input for audio without unnecessarily adding steps to the workflow like making and muxing seperate wav channels into an avi. That ridiculous limitation always got on my nerves with WME9, and I'll be happy even if that's the only functional difference I notice in Studio Edition beta 1.

Oh, and I'm sure everyone would love a new GUI. How about a few hints as to what is different, or what format changes to expect in the new GUI?

[broadband155]

I don't think that's correct though. WMA9 Pro already supports 7.1 channels. Could it be a M Audio driver issue?

zambelli, I am open to correction as I am really not very familiar but even when I select multi channel wav source under inputs, it only offers me six channels.
When I try to do 7.1 by using a previously muxed 8 channel audio file, it folds down to six channels automatically. I guess this could be an M audio driver issue but it does play eight discrete channels if I play the uncompressed but muxed 8 channel file from wavavimux.

[diogen]

I was interested as to whether or not we'll finally be able to use something more than stereo as input for audio without unnecessarily adding steps to the workflow like making and muxing seperate wav channels into an avi?Using AC3Filters it was possible to use DD 5.1 in WME since day one.

Diogen.

[mpgxsvcd]

Using AC3Filters it was possible to use DD 5.1 in WME since day one.

Diogen.

Care to elaborate on how to do this?

[mpgxsvcd]

I am starting to think that WME9 Pro is not actually coming out “Soon”. Just let us know if it is coming out this month or not. I doubt they would release it the week of the 4th. Then again maybe not?

[acidsex]

I am starting to think that WME9 Pro is not actually coming out “Soon”. Just let us know if it is coming out this month or not. I doubt they would release it the week of the 4th. Then again maybe not?


Well, we are past two months so soon was over a long time ago. Without bashing MS only, companies like them and Nero certainly have disappointed their customers time and again and it will eventually bite them in their asses. I give MS a bit more slack because after all, its beta and its free whereas Nero's customers pay for it and end up screwed either way.

Personally I dont care anymore. VC1 may be great but its slow to encode and theres no way to author for playback on next gen DVDs. Between Studio delay and Vista delays and losing features, MS is quickly going down the vaporware road on features.

[mrcorbo]

Care to elaborate on how to do this?

AC3filter and the Intervideo Audio filters have enabled processing AC3 for quite a while. However, I have found that WME9 is flaky and what works today for encoding may inexplicably and irreparrably stop working tomorrow with even a slight change in the codecs you have installed, with some vague error message that completely fails to explain why. But enough editorializing...

The short of it is that with one of these 2 codecs installed and set for 6 channel output and the speaker settings in Windows set to 5.1 speakers you should be able to process AC3 audio transparently.

[diogen]

Care to elaborate on how to do this?Using AC3Filter as the audio decoder will make DD 5.1 compatible with WMA Pro 9/10.
WME proceeds to encode in multichannel WMA Pro. I don't use Intervideo or any other additional audio filters.

I had my share of WME problems but never with AC3.
(Most of my encoding is satellite hidef with AC3).

Diogen.

[benwaggoner]

I am starting to think that WME9 Pro is not actually coming out “Soon”. Just let us know if it is coming out this month or not. I doubt they would release it the week of the 4th. Then again maybe not?
It's so close I can taste it. It should be Really Soon Now. However, since we have a quality-driven release process, until the bits are actually up on a server, I don't want to promise a particular date, since something can always be found that'd cause a delay (which is how we got here in the first place).

Fingers crossed, I'm running the final bits on my laptop right now.

[acidsex]

It's so close I can taste it. It should be Really Soon Now. However, since we have a quality-driven release process, until the bits are actually up on a server, I don't want to promise a particular date, since something can always be found that'd cause a delay (which is how we got here in the first place).

Fingers crossed, I'm running the final bits on my laptop right now.

Is it safe to say the final bits will be put on the server by the end of the week?

[benwaggoner]

Is it safe to say the final bits will be put on the server by the end of the week?
Like I said, we won't know for sure when the bits go up until they're up. There's always the risk that something will turn up in final testing that'll cause a delay.

I'm flattered by your interest - I'm sure you'll have a lot of great feedback for us on the beta as we start the push for 1.0.

[sisman2000]

CCAAAAANNNN"TTTT WWWWAAAIIIITTTTT...

i just encoded a few HD home video files with WM9 codec just because at full rez (WMV HD basically) and they looked awsome, so can't wait for studio to come out n try everything with VC1...

[benwaggoner]

CCAAAAANNNN"TTTT WWWWAAAIIIITTTTT...

i just encoded a few HD home video files with WM9 codec just because at full rez (WMV HD basically) and they looked awsome, so can't wait for studio to come out n try everything with VC1...
Bear in mind that Studio Edition uses the same DMO as in the beta VC-1 codec. So you can already start experimenting with the new settings. The unique feature that Studio Edition adds is segment reencoding.

[diogen]

I have two quick questions before Studio beta is released and takes over the conversations:

1. Is it (will it be) possible for 2-pass encoding to save the first pass results and reuse them while changing the parameters?
Since the first pass takes about as much time as the second, this would reduce total encoding time if done more than once.

2. When starting with 720/60p material (movie), what happens when 24fps is requested as output? Or 30fps? Is this just a bad idea?
Assuming everything is correctly flagged, will WME/Studio(beta) do the conversion based on frame analysis or just "mechanically"?

Sorry if those are stupid questions or have been answered before (couldn't find it).

Diogen.

[benwaggoner]

I have two quick questions before Studio beta is released and takes over the conversations:

1. Is it (will it be) possible for 2-pass encoding to save the first pass results and reuse them while changing the parameters?
Since the first pass takes about as much time as the second, this would reduce total encoding time if done more than once.
Changing the pass parameters can make rate control different enough that it'd invalidate the first pass results. However, we've solved your problem in a different way by having the first pass use a higher performance mode. In my typical use, I find the first pass is about 4x faster than the seceond pass.

2. When starting with 720/60p material (movie), what happens when 24fps is requested as output? Or 30fps? Is this just a bad idea?
Assuming everything is correctly flagged, will WME/Studio(beta) do the conversion based on frame analysis or just "mechanically"?
It'll just do it via frame duplication.You definitely want to use the same frame rate output as input. Frame rate isn't even an encoding setting - it's a timeline setting.
Sorry if those are stupid questions or have been answered before (couldn't find it).
Not stupid at all! And I'm glad you're so excited about the tool. I just hope you won't be too disappointed when you get it - it really is a beta, not a 1.0 grade release.

[Latexxx]

Does it support Avisynth? I mean good support. Not like in WMEncoder 9 where I have to select file+device input or something.

[diogen]

Thanks, Ben.
I always thought 60p->30p is safe, and 24fps is not.
By "frame duplication" do you mean the encoder won't encode the same frame twice?
It'll figure out they are the same in the source and just double the one encoded?
I had some significant diffrences in encoding times between 30p and 60p (satellite hidef, 720/60p, ~12Mbps).

...In my typical use, I find the first pass is about 4x faster than the seceond pass.
You mentioned Studio uses the same DMO.
Does the first pass have nothing to do with it?
How else could you accelerate the 1 pass that much?

Diogen.

EDIT: Could it be that the 4:1 ratio between passes is because of a slow (maxed out quality settings) second pass?
Or are Studio and WME different in this regard?

[DarkNite]

@diogen:

Thank you for your input, but that does not answer my question.

I was speaking as a content creator. AC3Filter is of no use to me as it only pertains to AC3 (which is not what my source would be), and falls under the unnecessary steps portion of my question even if it were. Encoding to AC3 just to be able to feed my audio into Studio Edition would be a less than optimal workflow ultimately resulting in inferior quality.

What I was asking is: Will Studio Edition (now, or later) natively accept LPCM tracks containing more than 2 channels without external applications or preprocessing?

[diogen]

Sorry, DarkNite, misunderstood your question.
Don't know the answer for that.

Diogen.

[broadband155]

I wonder if anyone can help with something specific. I really did want to get 7.1 encoding but as it isn't available yet, I am trying to manage with 5.1. When I encode the six audio streams using WME9, the sub channel is automatically reduced to the low frequencies only. I know it isn't the player that is doing it as I can play a muxed but uncompressed file and it isn't reduced. Is there any way to stop the encoder from automatically doing this? I need all six channels if possible to put out different languages on the video.
Thanks, Neil.

[Legend_Wolf]

It seems that Studio Edition will be postponed again, and we wait for it from April to Now. What's the meaning of "coming soon".

[crypto]

@broadband155
You are completely off track. Multi-channel encoding relies on the correlation between the channels and the .1 LFE is not a fully functional channel. You cannot encode totally different signals and expect good compression quality.

You can however encode multiple audio tracks for different languages and each language track itself can be multi-channel.

To do so there is no need to wait for Studio edition, WME9 can already do it all.

[crypto]

It seems that Studio Edition will be postponed again...

Legend_Wolf:
What makes you think like that? Is there an official statement?

[benwaggoner]

Could it be that the 4:1 ratio between passes is because of a slow (maxed out quality settings) second pass?
Or are Studio and WME different in this regard?
Yes, basically we run the first pass in a lower complexity mode, since we're mainly just getting rate estimation info from it.

[benwaggoner]

It seems that Studio Edition will be postponed again, and we wait for it from April to Now. What's the meaning of "coming soon".
REALLY soon :)!

The final bits have been signed off on, and we're just waiting for it to progate to the server. I'll post here when it's live.

[acidsex]

REALLY soon :)!

The final bits have been signed off on, and we're just waiting for it to progate to the server. I'll post here when it's live.

So is this like a this evening thing or sometime by end of the week thing or later? Sorry for being a pain. :)

[acidsex]

one quick question before this roll out. Will Studio work under Vista?

[benwaggoner]

So is this like a this evening thing or sometime by end of the week thing or later? Sorry for being a pain. :)
Do't worry, we're flattered by your interest.

Not sure how long this will take, honestly, since so many folks take this week off. I hope by the end of the week, but I haven't been given a commitment on that yet.

[benwaggoner]

one quick question before this roll out. Will Studio work under Vista?
I think that Studio Edition Beta 1 isn't working on Vista Beta 2. System requirement is XP.

We'll obviously want Studio Edition 1.0 to work on Vista RTM :).

[sisman2000]

Will it be possible to encode VC1 stream with beta edition and later encode that with Studio 1.0 to make it HD-DVD compatible? or will there be significant quality loss with this double encoding... Just wondering what technical differnece in the stream will make beta not able to encode to HD-DVD n ver 1.0 HD-DVD compatible?

[helloworld]

Ben,
What new or improved powers will the studio edition deliver to the live streaming function of encoder?
Cheers, dan

[acidsex]

I thought Studio was for offline encoding only which would leave live streaming to media encoder 9 if I am not mistaken.

[helloworld]

Any refs for that pls acid?
cheers Dan
Edit:
"Anyone doing live capture and streaming, screen capture, or intelligent streaming should continue to use Windows Media Encoder 9 Series."... that would probably fit the bill, refs wise.....
"intelligent streaming".... ha ha ha, what's the other sort, real, and quicktime?
thanks anyway
Cheers, dan

[acidsex]

I think Ben mentioned it earlier in this thread.

[acidsex]

So what are the GPU cards that are compatible for assisted encoding?

[benwaggoner]

Will it be possible to encode VC1 stream with beta edition and later encode that with Studio 1.0 to make it HD-DVD compatible? or will there be significant quality loss with this double encoding... Just wondering what technical difference in the stream will make beta not able to encode to HD-DVD n ver 1.0 HD-DVD compatible?
Beta 1 doesn't support HD DVD authoring, due to some differences in the ASF and .vc1 buffer models. That'll be coming in a later version.

[benwaggoner]

Ben,
What new or improved powers will the studio edition deliver to the live streaming function of encoder?
Cheers, dan
acidsex is correct - it's an offline encoder only.

You can use the new beta codec for live encoding, though.

[benwaggoner]

"Anyone doing live capture and streaming, screen capture, or intelligent streaming should continue to use Windows Media Encoder 9 Series."... that would probably fit the bill, refs wise.....
"intelligent streaming".... ha ha ha, what's the other sort, real, and quicktime?

Intelligent Streaming is the multiple bit rate solution in Windows Media, which allows a real-time stream to dynamically switch between dfferent data rate versions of the content encapsulate in a single file. Similar to RealMedia's SureStream technology.

QuickTime lacks anything as efficient as this, although it is possible to use QuickTime alternates to automatically choose between different files base on initially measured connection speed.

[benwaggoner]

So what are the GPU cards that are compatible for assisted encoding?
They're actually not GPUs (although a GPU vendor certainly could use the API if they wanted). Tarari has been our development partner on the new API, and have been providing WM encoding acceleration for a while now.

[acidsex]

They're actually not GPUs (although a GPU vendor certainly could use the API if they wanted). Tarari has been our development partner on the new API, and have been providing WM encoding acceleration for a while now.


How much do those cards generally run?

[benwaggoner]

How much do those cards generally run?
Here's the product page:

http://www.tarari.com/products-digitalmedia.html

I don't see a price listed there, but it's definitely priced for professional high-volume encoding. It's great stuff, and Tarari is doing a great job of contiually improving performance while approaching our bleeding edge software encoding quality.

[benwaggoner]

So is this like a this evening thing or sometime by end of the week thing or later? Sorry for being a pain. :)

We made it!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoderse/default.aspx

Enjoy! And make sure to read the EULA and release notes.

I look forward to your feedback.


EDIT: Fixed URL

[GmorG McRoth]

https://mail.windows.microsoft.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoderse/default.aspx
This link takes me to "Microsoft Outlook Web Access", I'm doing something wrong?

I think this whuld be proper link
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoderse/default.aspx

[CruNcher]

Hmm i tried to get a 1920x1080p 25 fps (ffdshow) Huffyuv yv12 video into Windows Media Encoder in the Preview i just see a green Video ? (workarround is to load it via directshowsource or avisource over avisynth that works)

Encoding error occured!
Error Code: 8007000E
Description: Out of memory (E_OUTOFMEMORY) <- when trying to Encode the Green Video ;)

0.50 frames/second (useing 2 bframes and default settings CBR bitrate quality ect ) for this 840 frames on a Athlon64 3800+ 2.4 GHz Encoding time 30 minutes target 12500 kbps hit 12527 kbps

for comparsion the same done with my HD balanced High Profile X264 in ABR mode target (12500)
encoded 840 frames, 1.61 fps, 12688.59 kb/s 10 minutes

[acidsex]

Yeah, it is VERY Slow. Even for a 520x400 resolution (after rendering an uncompressed file), the best I got was .83 fps. 1st pass was maybe 1.2 fps.

I understand this is a beta but I was expecting a little bit better speed than I got (I get better speed with WME9 but not much). The interface is ok for a Beta. While I was never that much of a fan of the WME9 GUI I found myself preferring that to what Studio currently offers. Not really sure why you need three tabs when tab 1 and tab 3 could be combined on the same tab. Does that make any sense?

[benwaggoner]

This link takes me to "Microsoft Outlook Web Access", I'm doing something wrong?

I think this whuld be proper link
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoderse/default.aspx
Yeah, I got it wrong, and you're right. Thanks

[benwaggoner]

Hmm i tried to get a 1920x1080p 25 fps (ffdshow) Huffyuv yv12 video into Windows Media Encoder in the Preview i just see a green Video ? (workarround is to load it via directshowsource or avisource over avisynth that works)
Interesting. We tested with Huffyuv a lot, but not with ffdshow.

Encoding error occured!
Error Code: 8007000E
Description: Out of memory (E_OUTOFMEMORY) <- when trying to Encode the Green Video ;)
I'll pass this on to our testers.

0.50 frames/second (useing 2 bframes and default settings CBR bitrate quality ect ) for this 840 frames on a Athlon64 3800+ 2.4 GHz Encoding time 30 minutes target 12500 kbps hit 12527 kbps

for comparsion the same done with my HD balanced High Profile X264 in ABR mode target (12500)
encoded 840 frames, 1.61 fps, 12688.59 kb/s 10 minutes
Were you doing scaling or 10-bit to 8-bit conversion? We've got a really high quality Lancoz scaling mode, so scaling can actually take up the bulk of processing time. To test codec speed, encode the same frame size as source, and uncheck the "dithering" check box.

[benwaggoner]

Yeah, it is VERY Slow. Even for a 520x400 resolution (after rendering an uncompressed file), the best I got was .83 fps. 1st pass was maybe 1.2 fps.
Any scaling?

What hardware?

The codec is 4-way threaded, and we're targeting dual-dual workstations as what we expect our primary customers to be using.

I understand this is a beta but I was expecting a little bit better speed than I got (I get better speed with WME9 but not much). The interface is ok for a Beta. While I was never that much of a fan of the WME9 GUI I found myself preferring that to what Studio currently offers. Not really sure why you need three tabs when tab 1 and tab 3 could be combined on the same tab. Does that make any sense?
You mean the project and encoding parameters tabs? Can you go into a little more detail about how you'd imagine combining those?

Bear in mind the tool isn't meant for high-volume encoding - its core scenario is cases where segment reencoding is going to be used, so the GUI focuses on enabling that "craft" style workflow.

[acidsex]

Any scaling?

What hardware?

The codec is 4-way threaded, and we're targeting dual-dual workstations as what we expect our primary customers to be using.


You mean the project and encoding parameters tabs? Can you go into a little more detail about how you'd imagine combining those?

Bear in mind the tool isn't meant for high-volume encoding - its core scenario is cases where segment reencoding is going to be used, so the GUI focuses on enabling that "craft" style workflow.

Ben, using it on a A64 3700+. Definitely might want to invest in a dual core set up :)

What I am talking about is the first tab. You select video and audio, and then move to the timeline tab. Then to the third tab to set the options. Why not combine tab one and three and have the options on tab three be right below the video/audio selection on the first tab. Not that big of a deal I just didnt see the need to have to use all three tabs when two would have sufficed.

[CruNcher]

Were you doing scaling or 10-bit to 8-bit conversion? We've got a really high quality Lancoz scaling mode, so scaling can actually take up the bulk of processing time. To test codec speed, encode the same frame size as source, and uncheck the "dithering" check box.

nope no Scaling input is 8-bit video 1920x1080p as input colorspace it shows X8R8G8B8 hmm, dithering on/off makes no big difference with this source as i do nothing inside of WME just encoding :P

and another thing


The codec is 4-way threaded, and we're targeting dual-dual workstations as what we expect our primary customers to be using.


How can you use that as an argument it seems as your codec is allready slower Single threaded compared to a good tuned H.264 one do you think that makes it faster compared to a good tuned 4 way threaded H.264 Codec sorry but that is no argument for Speed neither for Quality. And see my Nvidia thread sure it's most probably Nvidias error here but compared to H.264 that allready has (stable) working hardware acelleration it's a shame.

[benwaggoner]

Ben, using it on a A64 3700+. Definitely might want to invest in a dual core set up :)
Dual-sockets and dual processors even.

What I am talking about is the first tab. You select video and audio, and then move to the timeline tab. Then to the third tab to set the options. Why not combine tab one and three and have the options on tab three be right below the video/audio selection on the first tab. Not that big of a deal I just didnt see the need to have to use all three tabs when two would have sufficed.
I see what you mean. Part of it is just flow - you make decisions in the order they typically get made in.

What's my project's video type?
What clips am I going to use?
What are my overall encoding settings
Which segments get reencoded, and how

Also, as I do a lot of trade show demos, I always write down "must be demoable at 1024x768" as a requirement, which gives a maximum amount of stuff on a given page.

But that doesn't mean there isn't room for further evolution - can you explain what advantages one less tab would provide for you?

[benwaggoner]

nope no Scaling input is 8-bit video 1920x1080p as input colorspace it shows X8R8G8B8 hmm
What codec. Something in IYUV (8-bit 4:2:0) or equivalent would be best.

How can you use that as an argument it seems as your codec is allready slower Single threaded compared to a good tuned H.264 one do you think that makes it faster compared to a good tuned 4 way threaded H.264 Codec sorry but that is no argument for Speed neither for Quality. And see my Nvidia thread sure it's most probably Nvidias error here but compared to H.264 that allready has (stable) working hardware acelleration it's a shame.
It's not an argument, just a description of our scenario. This is a Beta 1, and we certainly aren't claiming this is as fast as it can get.

Also, note that we're supporting the Tarari board for hardware acceleration, which can provide a nice multiple of encoding speed. Real-world performance on a dedicated high-end encoding workstation is already quite fast, and will be getting a lot faster.

Current metrics from the studios shows that we have roughly the same processing time per pixel in VC-1 for HD DVD as they get from MPEG-2 for DVD for professional title production. And the feedback we've had from studios has been that focusing on compression efficiency and reduction of operator time is much more important at this point than render time.

There's certainly a lot of optimization work we haven't done yet, but I wouldn't want to speculate what kind of gains we'll see between here and RTM.

[DarkNite]

I have only tried to encode using raw YV12 and I haven't seen the green screen yet, but I can relate to the out of memory error. I get that one consistently at ~10% completion of the first pass when using 720p material. I haven't even tried the 1080p material yet.

[benwaggoner]

I have only tried to encode using raw YV12 and I haven't seen the green screen yet, but I can relate to the out of memory error. I get that one consistently at ~10% completion of the first pass when using 720p material. I haven't even tried the 1080p material yet.
How much VRAM do you have? We've seen this with less than the 256 MB required for 1920x1080.

[DarkNite]

256MB GeForce 6800GT

Working directory is set to use a clean 200GB drive

[daniel.aam]

When using 10bit footage why doesn't WMSEβ recognise it as 10bit in properties? Windows is also extremely bad at recognising the pixel depth of footage any reason why? Also is it the WMSEβ application that performs the dithering or the VC1 codec? will 10-->bit encoding be available for ML@MP WM9?

Apologies if I have veered from the topic somewhat.

[benwaggoner]

When using 10bit footage why doesn't WMSEβ recognise it as 10bit in properties? Windows is also extremely bad at recognising the pixel depth of footage any reason why? Also is it the WMSEβ application that performs the dithering or the VC1 codec? will 10-->bit encoding be available for ML@MP WM9?

Apologies if I have veered from the topic somewhat.
It should recognize 10-bit. What codec are you using?

It's the app that does the dithering.

The VC-1 spec is 8-bit only, for all profiles.

[daniel.aam]

Hi Ben,

4 bits of footage:

+576p AVI uncompressed and Cineform 2.6 10bit codec.
+1080p AVI uncompresses and Cineform 2.6 10bit codec.

both give the result as 8 bit per pixel from properties option in WMSE, but explorer states that the 1080p stuff is 24bpp and the 576p is 16bpp.

My question about the dithering was unclear - I mean't will you support 10-->8bit dithering for [WMV3] in the final release of the studio - which you are.

Also does WMSE have a more updated WVC1 and WMV3 codec than the codec package posted here :

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=111633

Am I able to tweak the registry settings as one would for WVC1 for the codec released above and with WMSE? If so what settings are actually available to me?

Will you be releasing the SDK/API so that external encoder developers can implement both the 10bit pipeline with the dithering option as well as the 3 pass re-encoding??


Many Thanks.

Daniel.

[rjcobain]

http://www.meteorlogni.com/images/NLCBangor14-7-06vc1.wmv

Noctilucent clouds example in vc1. 5Mbps, 720p25, 16.1MB. Can't do 1080p :( only 128megs vram

Sharpness seems better than VCM codec, speed is also better for given quality I think.

Why is there a 256MB VRAM requirement for 1080p, when there is no problem having 128MB using the VCM codec?

[rjcobain]

http://www.meteorlogni.com/images/NLCBangor14-7-06hidef720pstd.avi

VCM 5Mbps, 720p25 for comparison, its a close one, VCM is only 13.4 Meg hmm

both 1 pass CBR btw

[benwaggoner]

Hi Ben,

4 bits of footage:

+576p AVI uncompressed and Cineform 2.6 10bit codec.
+1080p AVI uncompresses and Cineform 2.6 10bit codec.

both give the result as 8 bit per pixel from properties option in WMSE, but explorer states that the 1080p stuff is 24bpp and the 576p is 16bpp.
Cineform isn't one of our officially supported codecs, and I don't know how much testing it has recieved. I'm a fan of Cineform, and we definitely want it to be fully supported in a later version.

Also does WMSE have a more updated WVC1 and WMV3 codec than the codec package posted here :
It doesn't support WMV3 at all yet, just WVC1. The one in that link is around the same time, but has more features. It's probably more fun to play with as a compression nerd, since you get many more switches.

Am I able to tweak the registry settings as one would for WVC1 for the codec released above and with WMSE? If so what settings are actually available to me?
Nope - WMESE uses its own private version of the codec, and ignores the reg key settings.

Will you be releasing the SDK/API so that external encoder developers can implement both the 10bit pipeline with the dithering option as well as the 3 pass re-encoding??
We're looking on the right way to share the technologies used in the tool, but haven't decided on final plans yet.

[benwaggoner]

Why is there a 256MB VRAM requirement for 1080p, when there is no problem having 128MB using the VCM codec?
The VRAM requirement is for the preview mode in the player - nothing to do with the compression itself.

[woah!]

very slow compared to x264.

1.80fps compared to 9.77fps with x264. both used 2pass settings.

heres the 2 clips i did with vc-1 and x264:

vc-1 encode (http://rapidshare.de/files/27156679/clip2.zip.htmll)

x264 encode (http://rapidshare.de/files/27152183/clip1.zip.html)

VC-1 i used 1900br 2pass and 6ch audio which gave a muxed 14.4meg size file.

x264 i used 1900br 2pass and 6ch aac audio which gave a muxed 14.4meg size file.

lets just say i will be carrying on with my usual x264 encodes mainly because of the speed issue.

http://images.dr3vil.com/files2/default/vc1.jpg


http://images.dr3vil.com/files2/default/x264.jpg

[daniel.aam]

Hi Ben,

What 10bit codecs do you support fully at the moment?

[Vitaly Ivanov]

Yeah, it's slow and doesn't work with 1080p on my laptop, but it's really good when encoding filmgrain

[benwaggoner]

Hi Ben,

What 10bit codecs do you support fully at the moment?
(sorry for the delay - I've been out the last couple of weeks recovering from shoulder surgery)
I've mainly been using v210 codecs, like the Blackmagic 10-bit 4:2:2.