Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition Beta 1 released

[benwaggoner]

The studio edtion has vanished from the MS site with no explaination.

No more beta 1, no beta anything, no release.

Would be kind of nice if some on could have at least posted what the heck happened.

Was the product scrapped?
Sorry, half of the campus in on vacation, and the other half is without power.

Simply, the current build timed out, and we didn't have a new build to release. The v11 codecs are more recent and higher quality anyway, so we haven't been recommending using the Beta 1 anyway.

We're working on how to make the technologies previewed in Studio Edition widely available, but don't have any more details to share just now.

[crypto]

Thanks for the info and good to know that there is more to come.

[moon1234]

Sorry, half of the campus in on vacation, and the other half is without power.

Simply, the current build timed out, and we didn't have a new build to release. The v11 codecs are more recent and higher quality anyway, so we haven't been recommending using the Beta 1 anyway.

We're working on how to make the technologies previewed in Studio Edition widely available, but don't have any more details to share just now.

I used studio edition quite a lot just for its easy batching capabilities. We have a fairly large matter in litigation right now where depositions are being video'd to DVD. The DVD's are then ripped, re-encoded and then streamed for in-house and offsite counsel review. This is a very time intensive process. Being able to easily batch process much of the video with Studio Edition was very nice. I know I could do this on the command line, but I liked the GUI.

Now, Studio Edition will not even run. It says it is expired and to get a new version. I am now forced to manually encode with the Windows Media Encoder, one file at a time. I frame serve with Avisynth and convert AC3 to WAV first with BeSweet. This can all be very time intensive, but it is necessary to do it manually as each court reporter seems to use slightly different equipment. All of them seem to have some sort or "problem" with the video that needs fixing in post processing.

One tool that I have been hoping SOMEONE would develop would be the ability to convert a .csv file into a SIML complaint caption file that could be embedded in ASF or standalone on a Windows Media Server and served with a .wsx script. Being able to include synchronized text from the deposition transcript as captions would be sweet. It would save a lot on Trial Presentation software and also benefit any reviewer who would not need to have a copy of the transcript in front of them.

Again these are just my wishes based on what I use the software for everyday.

[benwaggoner]

I used studio edition quite a lot just for its easy batching capabilities. We have a fairly large matter in litigation right now where depositions are being video'd to DVD. The DVD's are then ripped, re-encoded and then streamed for in-house and offsite counsel review. This is a very time intensive process. Being able to easily batch process much of the video with Studio Edition was very nice. I know I could do this on the command line, but I liked the GUI.
There are lots of commercial products that will do batch encoding of Windows Media content. For DVD to WMV, I've had good luck with Canopus ProCoder, which is fast, and can read an unencrypted .vob file directly as a source file.

While we provide some tools around Windows Media, the bulk of Windows Media content is produced using tools built on our SDKs.

One tool that I have been hoping SOMEONE would develop would be the ability to convert a .csv file into a SIML complaint caption file that could be embedded in ASF or standalone on a Windows Media Server and served with a .wsx script. Being able to include synchronized text from the deposition transcript as captions would be sweet. It would save a lot on Trial Presentation software and also benefit any reviewer who would not need to have a copy of the transcript in front of them.
Have you checked out WPF/E:

http://www.microsoft.com/wpfe/

Among other things, it will support real-time rich media overlayed on top of WMV files.

The Windows Media format supports captioning data, but Windows Media Player itself doesn't play those back. But a number of companies have build custom players on top of our Player SDK that do real-time captioning.

Again these are just my wishes based on what I use the software for everyday.
Sounds like great stuff to have in the market.

I don't know that Microsoft would be providing you the exact tools you need, but we're already providing the technology third parties could use to build them.

[moon1234]

Yes direct playback of captions is already supported. Please see http://www.webaim.org/techniques/captions/windows/

It is sad to see a good tool like Windows Media Studio Edition dropped from development. MS had a lot of good press from this at NAB 2006 and then quietly killed the project. Now we hear the "Buy a third party product" tag line.

[benwaggoner]

Yes direct playback of captions is already supported. Please see http://www.webaim.org/techniques/captions/windows/
Awesome, thanks. I love finding out other people have already done the hard work :).

It is sad to see a good tool like Windows Media Studio Edition dropped from development. MS had a lot of good press from this at NAB 2006 and then quietly killed the project. Now we hear the "Buy a third party product" tag line.
Yeah, I was pretty sad about it too. But given a fixed amount of engineering resources, I think we're better off making a great codec that any software vendor can use, instead of having to spread ourselves thin trying to support every scenario.

Expect to see a variety of products doing everything that Studio Edition tried to do, but a lot better, and a lot more other stuff as well.