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.