Corona, Windows media 9 out today

[69link]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.asp

Coming Sept 4
"Corona" becomes Windows Media 9 Series"

Thats today :)

[Suzahara]

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Jul02/07-15CoronaLaunchDatePR.asp

Not quite yet, just a beta release at a summit in L.A. Check out that little blurb in the About Microsoft down bottom, gotta love that little promotion for the company :p

[Neo Neko]

At this point it will not touch my system. After reading about those who have so far this beta seems to alpha for general user testing ATM. Perhaps the next Beta.

[griff30]

I have it from the WMP9 that was leaked. I can say it is one of the cleanest looking codecs I have ever used. The sound is great all the way down to 32kbits. and it lets you use 5.1 sound hell it even has a 7.1 setting.
The first down side is I had to use the WMV plugin for Flask (http://www.dvd-digest.net/downloads/files/flaskmpeg/wmvcreator.zip) and I hate Flask anymore! There are no other DVD to WMV converters that I have found.
If you know of another please correct me!!
Also the speed sucks at encodes. The fastest I could do was 6FPS on an 1700+ Athlon.
My previous bitches about Flask are all back in my face too. I thought I was done with that flakey, crash-happy encoder forever once I found Nandub and or Vidomi.
PS.
Anyone who writes a working WMV encoder module for Vidomi or Nandub or anything more crashless than Flask can contact ME about their PAYPAL account and I will see that money goes there. :)
I don't want to go through hoops either. No DVD>Huffy>WMV. just straight to WMV.

[atracus]

@griff30

you have probably already found this....

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.asp

[atx]

[griff30]

Yea, atracus I got that one earlier today. Didn't have time to play with it but seeing as how they are so antipiracy, I dont expect it to open .vobs but Im gonna give it a try. or break something trying...
The Flask plugin works but like I said Flask is flakey (least for me.)
Thanks though!!

[Easy123]

I dl the Public Beta this morning. And installed it.. No Probs there... Then I dl the Trailer for Halo2 with 5.1 Sound and what can I say.... Damn good!!!!! I think WM9 isn´t that bad at all (i hated WM everytime!)... Perhaps you wanna look for youself? Here´s the Link for the Halo2 Trailer (http://boss.streamos.com/download/microsoft/downloads/halo2.wmv) (you must install the WMP9 to watch it!)


@griff30
Did you find a way to make use of WM9 Professional??? Damn that FlaskMPEG only decodes to 2.0 Channels... Damn thing!!!


Cu
Easy123

[griff30]

Going there now.
Yeah the sound is what gets me. I love 5.1 and this is one time where I will say M$ did thier homework.
Have anyone else tried to encode WMP9 with 5.1 ? It is slow to encode but it sounds damn nice. Just wish I could find something besides Flask.
If you havent tried it, get the plugin I liked above unzip it to you Flask folder and fire up Flask. God I need to find something better than that GUI.
Select the Windows Media Video 9 quality 100% and set your desired bitrate with a calculator.
Then Select the Audio and select either WM9 audio Proffesional with at least128kbps 48khs 5.1channel 24bit. or select the NON professional with audio as low as 32kbps 44(A/V CBR).
And wait to see what this sounds like.

I'm the first to bitch about M$ but I'm no Fanboy when it comes to my archived movies. I want what looks and sounds the best this so far has sound the best to me. the video is awsome too.
Thanks for the HALO2 link!

[kallekill]

How do you get the 5.1 sound working? I downloaded a demo of WM audio 9 from microsofts website, but the file EnablingMultichannelTutorial.wmv was missing in the package :(

I got a audigy-card hooked up to a dolby digital decoder but i guess i can't use the decoder for wm9. I also have it hooked up to a 4 speaker setup that I use when playing eax-games. Can I use these spekaers to get 4 channel surround from Windows media audio 9?

[griff30]

I don't think my direct Flask encodes are gonna work at 5.1 channel. Sigh. My SCVDs worked in thier encoder at 5.1 I can't seem to make Flask do it.
My last encode was muffled from Flask in 5.1. Die Flask.
Well the low bitrate sound was ok but I want 5.1
I'll keep you upto date after tommorow.

[griff30]

4.1 should work I think it's down mixed. Dunno.

my direct encode of Aliens in the non professional WMA9 at 64kbps sounds good.
I think it's gonna be that I use an intermediate file like a high bitrate SVCD or Huffy AVI to use the 5.1 without muffling.

[oddball]

The 5.1 audio is not AC3 though is it? It's their own 5.1 variant which means it's pretty useless for home cinema setups (Unless you card has the hookups to enable 6 seperate analog channels to 6 inputs on your amp/reciever). It's only gonna work on soundcards with those weird 5.1 speaker varianst is it not? Not so good.

I just tried playing the demo Halo2 clip. Looks weird. Apart from some jerking (Probably my Pantium III 700 not keeping up. Looks like it eats CPU's for breakfast) it also had some weird wobbling along straight lines. Very strange. Don't know if this is because of the CGI or not. Gonna need to see some live action clips to verify.

[oddball]

OK so far I am unimpressed. Just checked out the Kelsy clip that M$ likes to use for their demos. It's the 750kilobit one. Looks like shit. Water turns into blocks and faces have that watery/pasty effect.

Has anyone got a high bitrate clip as if you was doing an under 90 minute movie to 1 CD? The Halo2 is no good. I need something encoded from a good live action DVD.

[69link]

@oddball,

Well the kelseyville demo is encoded with old Video 8 and not the new Video 9, so I wouldn't expect too much of it.

Check these instead: http://www.windowsmedia.com/9series/Play/Default.asp?page=3

[Easy123]

Just an info:
The Windows Media Encoder can open .Vob this time... You must have a DVD Software installed (PowerDVD or Intervideo WinDVD)... Intervideo works... Look into the help files...


Cu
Easy123

[Tom Servo]

WME 9.0 can directly transcode from VOB files when a soft DVD player is installed.

--edit--
Oops I need glasses :P

[slavickas]

Hi
I have got unusual problem WME tries encode videos in realtime (and does it, but it's not good :angry: ) because quiality is completely terrible) probably Duron 750 is a bit slow for WMT9 realtime encoding ;)
maybe anybody got similar prob?

[Tom Servo]

OMFG

Coding directly from VOB in WME is goddamn faster than using DVD2AVI. o_O

[tanksimpson]

Tom Servo, it sounds like you've had success converting vob to wmv directly, so I'd thought I'd ask you what make/version of DVD player you have installed, and what OS you are running. I have WinDVD 2000 installed on Win2K and I am finding that WME 9 crashes whenever I try to encode straight from the vob with an error message that mentions "ivivideo.ax". Anybody else have this problem?

[oddball]

69link all I get on that page is "This content requires the new
Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta..." even though I have it installed and working.

Any direct links to the WMV's?

[griff30]

Loks like I gotta go back to WinDVD. I switched to PowerDVD and thought it had more features. Looks like I have to go back to a lot of things I haven't used in a while like Flask..Sigh
Tom Servo, About how fast would you say your encodes are?

[plonk420]

Originally posted by griff30
Going there now.
Yeah the sound is what gets me. I love 5.1 and this is one time where I will say M$ did thier homework.


close... too bad Real beat them to the punch, at least in the low-bitrate (around 250kbit/s) arena, which is the only reason i use these codecs. still has that divx/mp4/wmv8 swimming boxes that i don't really see in RM9, though VERY hard to find in the clip i tried out (i still need to do a few more tests, but it's definitely better than M$'s attempts number 7 and 8)

[Koepi]

You can get rid of these "swimming boxes" in mpeg4 by doing what RV9 does: heavily pre- and postprocessing and sacrifycing plenty of detail for that.

Just use an avisynth script and add convolution3d with a more aggressive setup, et voilà, there you have no swimming boxes (we call them "moving macroblocks" :) ).

Regards,
Koepi

[griff30]

Originally posted by Koepi
You can get rid of these "swimming boxes" in mpeg4 by doing what RV9 does: heavily pre- and postprocessing and sacrifycing plenty of detail for that.

Just use an avisynth script and add convolution3d with a more aggressive setup, et voilà, there you have no swimming boxes (we call them "moving macroblocks" :) ).

Regards,
Koepi
Yea but doesn't that just make the movie a little fuzzy?
For output to TV I dont think it would matter though either way.


Yeah plonk420, Real did beat them to the punch. I saw friends Real movie he encoded and it looks and sounds sweet. I haven't tried that route yet. Maybe this weekend I will give the new Real a try.
I tried to encode with Quicktime6 several times from another friends advice and everytime it would not recognize any sound and I had to use uncompressed AVI. Quicktime sucks. Real is now kick ass. I will be trying more with WiMP9 this weekend to see if I can get thier (M$) encoder to do 5.1 channel. I thought I had it a 5.1 channel WMV the other day, but it was just me getting to drunk or excited about a new codec to play with. After I listened to it sober today it was NOT a 5.1 WMV...Sigh to many Coronas.

[plonk420]

Originally posted by Koepi
You can get rid of these "swimming boxes" in mpeg4 by doing what RV9 does: heavily pre- and postprocessing and sacrifycing plenty of detail for that.

Just use an avisynth script and add convolution3d with a more aggressive setup, et voilà, there you have no swimming boxes (we call them "moving macroblocks" :) ).

Regards,
Koepi

so the convolution3d is like RV9's blurring of stuff just out or way out of the focused part of depth of field or whatnot?

[Koepi]

Uh, too much to explain, head over to the avisynth forum and read for yourself :)

Regards,
koepi

[plonk420]

Originally posted by griff30

Yea but doesn't that just make the movie a little fuzzy?
For output to TV I dont think it would matter though either way.


Yeah plonk420, Real did beat them to the punch. I saw friends Real movie he encoded and it looks and sounds sweet. I haven't tried that route yet. Maybe this weekend I will give the new Real a try.
I tried to encode with Quicktime6 several times from another friends advice and everytime it would not recognize any sound and I had to use uncompressed AVI. Quicktime sucks. Real is now kick ass. I will be trying more with WiMP9 this weekend to see if I can get thier (M$) encoder to do 5.1 channel. I thought I had it a 5.1 channel WMV the other day, but it was just me getting to drunk or excited about a new codec to play with. After I listened to it sober today it was NOT a 5.1 WMV...Sigh to many Coronas.

heh Coronas :p

yeah, i don't swear by these codecs (nor use them a hell of a lot)... i mainly use them to *gasp* transcode SVCD music vids i grab to send to a friend (without taking forever on my 256k upstream speed ^_^) ...but i must say they've come a long way from the eyesores under-300kbs streams were even a year ago...

Real, altho their vid codecs have usually sucked ass, has always seemed to rule the low bitrate audio streaming, IMO...

[atracus]

Originally posted by griff30

I will be trying more with WiMP9 this weekend to see if I can get thier (M$) encoder to do 5.1 channel. I thought I had it a 5.1 channel WMV the other day, but it was just me getting to drunk or excited about a new codec to play with. After I listened to it sober today it was NOT a 5.1 WMV...Sigh to many Coronas.

sure it does 5.1!

I succeeded to have it working tonite... WinXP, Creative SBLive, Athlon 1GHz/512MB RAM, all the latest drivers for sound, 5+1 Cambridge Soundworks equip.

I tried 192Kbps 5+1 16bit 44.100, and an AC3 file for 6-channels testing (playing "left - right - center - ..."), and the separation is clear, sound is sharp, even though I wish to try higher bitrates during the w-end.

Then I went for a couple of short clips off a DVD I owe (LotR).

With stream editor I could have video + "n" audio tracks multiplexed together: just provide the different audio tracks a "language" reference in the appropriate encoder dropbox, in order to be able to mux them together to the main video and switched "on the fly" with WMP9 as they play (just go find "Play/Audio and Language Tracks/...select one of the languages...).

Just try with a 30-secs samples from your favourite dvd's, if WinDVD feeding doesn't work go with DVD2AVI+VFAPI, it's sweet! (then you have to work out all the cropping and resizing in WMEnc, if you use the official DVD2AVI of course...).

have fun!

[atx]

[Easy123]

I just converted a THX Trailer (35secs) with it´s 5.1 Sound (192kbit) at a 910bkit Videorate (VBR) and I must say not bad at all.... It´s about 4,71MB in size... If someones is interested I could send it (or maybe it´s possible) to attach it in here... 3,5mb Rar File...


CU
Easy123

[Tom Servo]

Can't say any real speed results, it's just the decoding of the VOB is faster when working on the VOB directly than using VFAPI. I noticed it on the speed of the 1st pass.

I used PowerDVD XP with latest patch, NVDVD just made the encoder crash, and with Cineplayer it always reported that it couldn't set up the source.

Just 5.1 audio doesn't work when decoding a VOB directly.

[Tom Servo]

Cropping is easy with DVD2AVI, at least when using 16:9. Just set the source resolution to 720x432, set cropping to 1:78 Widescreen and use allow non-square pixels.

[atracus]

Originally posted by Tom Servo
Just 5.1 audio doesn't work when decoding a VOB directly.

my guess is that WMEnc doesn't understand .ac3 format at all, that's why you HAVE to go for the 6-waves - rip with BeSweet and feed'em to the encoder.... (don't repeat my mistake: _remember_ to set the "Theater Multi-Channel Surround Sound" mode in the Audio Dropbox on the Session Properties/Compression form, otherwise you won't have 6-channels but just 2/0 stereo out!!!)

but when it's done it *works*, I have 6(six) separated channels out, differently from all the bad luck I had with my Ogg attempts....

take care

[atx]

[kondamin]

i guess i'm the only one who isn't pleased with the audio codec

since i don't have a lot of time i tried encoding a pretty good sounding mp3 to a vbr wma at 70kbit

though the sise was impressive the sound qualety dropped tremendously
it seemd the codec removed all the dynamics in midrange from the song

perhaps it's a prevention of further copyright infringement

[Stebet]

This never seems to get through to people. DON'T transcode from an MP3 to another format (ogg, wma etc..) or vice versa. This severely degrades the audio quality since these methods use different techniques of removing and compressing audio data and since you transcode from a lossy format to another lossy format you are getting the worst of both worlds.

Try ripping a CD track straight from the CD to a 64kbps mp3 and a 64kbps WMA and see which sounds better. My bet is the WMA.

[Stebet]

On to another subject. Can someone write a short guide for DVD ripping to WMV9. I'm not quite sure how to do this (except for the lengthy DVD2AVI and Avisynth method) and since Windows Media Encoder can open VOB's (provided that you have a Software DVD player installed like WinDVD and PowerDVD, these seem to work) i figured it shouldn't be to hard, but so far the results i'm getting are very very weird (blur of death).

Anyone?

[griff30]

Ok Stebet,
Here is a small usable guide for lower bitrate 1 CD rips.
1. Rip with Smartripper or DVD Decrypter (you know where to get them)
2. Download and unzip this file called wmvcreator.zip (http://www.dvd-digest.net/downloads/files/flaskmpeg/wmvcreator.zip) and drop the files into your Flask folder.
Use about any Bitrate calculator like Bearson's Bitrate calculator.
3. Open Flask. Open your ripped movie IFO.
4. Delete the current job and select your start and end point and click ADD JOB ( I know it's rudimentery but for newbies)
5. Open your configure output module.
6. Select Windows Media Video 9. NOT THE SCREEN CODEC just the regular. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE DOWNLOADED THE WM9 from Microshaft.
7. Select your audio codec (Windows Media 9 Audio Not professional as I dont think FLASK will do more than 2 channels..)according to your source 44.Khz or 48.
Select the bitrates from your Audio video
8. Customise your encodes Name copywrite ect.
Click back and hit Flask it. It's SLOW and flakey but I had done some encodes last week with the leaked media player. Proof ( I have a nice FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY BUILD 2600 watermark on WINXP desktop for the last week..
I hate hate hate Flask but it was the only way I could VERY easily adjust the bitrates perfectly. I'm looking for something other than Flask now.
Hope this helps and hope I didn't offend anyone with how I worded it but I suspect some newbies will want to play with it too.

[Stebet]

I'm not exactly a newbie but thanks for your response. ;)

It's better than nothing and hopefully some newbies can get it to work this way. I on the other hand hate Flask and i'm looking for a good way to make 2-cd rips (preferably with 5.1 audio) but so far it seems it's quite difficult (without Avisynth at least). I guess my lazy ass will just have to start looking at avisynth scripts :D

[Tom Servo]

The catch is, when transcoding VOBs, you can't set Marks not starting from 0:00:00, or else the encoder fucks up on 2-pass (prolly decoder related).

[atracus]

Originally posted by Stebet
I on the other hand hate Flask and i'm looking for a good way to make 2-cd rips (preferably with 5.1 audio) but so far it seems it's quite difficult (without Avisynth at least).

@Stebet,

could you succeed to use AviSynth for feeding video in? I get a "format unsupported" error as I try to move on.... Should I reinstall the a.s. dll's, iyo?

tia

[atx]

[Tom Servo]

I made experiments. I could fit Shrek (90min) on one CD with 5.1 sound.

I'm using 192kbit VBR 5.1 with peak bitrate at 224kbit, and 864kbit VBR Video at 720x432 (thats 720x576 cropped for 16:9) with peak bitrate at 1440kbit, max decoder complexity. Sounds and looks pretty good on the 5min test clips I made. Now just give me the WM9 DVD layout standards and a player for it.

[Stebet]

@atracus

I haven't really tried with avisynth but i'll try it later tonight and see how it goes.

@Tom Servo
What method did you use for Shrek (avisynth?)?

[Easy123]

Does anyone know what Windows Media 9 Professional is (Video)?? I dl the Brute Force Trailer and the Video got encoded with it...

Thx
Easy123

[norxh]

hmm, i havent seen anything about pro video, apparently the pro audio is 5.1 chan.

i'm getting pretty impressive results with wm9 so far. i've uploaded a short sample encode here... link (http://members.lycos.co.uk/unsolve1/wm9test2-1.wmv). its a 55 second, 6,019,769byte file. that comes out to, 875kbit/s. keep in my mind this is not a dvd rip, its capture from satellite over analog connection. unfortunately i cant figure out a way to change the aspect ratio during playback. i capture in 480x480.

however, i wouldnt even consider useing wm9, until you can play in something besides wmp9. it wont play in wmp6.4 :( like many of you probably, i hate wmp9.

[lighty]

Originally posted by norxh
however, i wouldnt even consider useing wm9, until you can play in something besides wmp9. it wont play in wmp6.4 :( like many of you probably, i hate wmp9.

It plays in wmp 6.4 classic (a derivative of wmp 6.4) under XP without any problems. :D
1. Install wmp9 but don't associatte any files with it.
2. Install wme9 and after you're done with it simply go to installation directory and find wmfdist.exe and run it.
3. If wmp9 is still trying to play wmv and other files- simply manualy change file asociations in windoze to point to wmp 6.4 classic.

This combo worked for me and I am using wmp 6.4 classic to watch that halo2.wmv coded with wm9. Maybe any of these 2 steps are unnecessary but since I got it to work that way I don't want to experiment no more for the time being. :sly:

[Tom Servo]

I'm using DVD2AVI frameserving atm. Suddenly WME started to fuck up direct VOB ripping. I didn't try AviSynth yet, heard its faster than VFAPI, but a pain in the ass to get working with WME.

WMV9 switches to Pro automatically with a certain bitrate. I think when I encoded to 1.2mbit VBR, Media Player said WMV9 Pro, below it just says WMV9. The docs say the same, with a certain resolution and bitrate, it uses Pro automatically.

Btw here's a shot, that's another test snippet I did. But it always shows the sum of the peak bitrates (Vid+Aud). I sent a bug report about this to MS already, because it fucks up Windows Media Services too, the player tells me Network Congestion all the time, because the bitrate is below the peak. (Yes I have a Videoserver :) )

http://www.tomservo.cc/crap/wmvpro.jpg

[Stebet]

Well people.. i finally managed to rip a DVD to WMV9 using DVD2AVI -> Avisynth (for cropping, resizing etc.. although that can be done in the Windows Media Encoder) -> VFAPI -> Windows Media Encoder. I used BeSweet to demux the AC3 into a Stereo WAV (i'd appreciate some good hints and/or instructions to change the AC3 to 6 individual mono wave files, one for each channel) and then encoded that together into a WMV.

Phew.. a bit of a lengthy process which most likely can be simplified a bit but it works.

Please tell me what kind of results you people have been getting. I got a decent looking 1-CD dvd rip of Monty Python's Holy Grail (althoug a bit blurred) but i didn't resize it (encoded at 720x???) so it can propably look a lot better. I still think it looked a lot better than my DivX 5.02 1-CD rips..

My next step is to try resizing it and see how it looks and then test 2-cd rips.

P.S.
One thing i really love about the Windows Media Encoder is that it tells you the bitrate overhead. A really nice feature which i've missed from all proggys except Gordian-Knot.

[atracus]

Originally posted by Stebet
Well people.. i finally managed to rip a DVD to WMV9 using DVD2AVI -> Avisynth (for cropping, resizing etc.. although that can be done in the Windows Media Encoder) -> VFAPI -> Windows Media Encoder. I used BeSweet to demux the AC3 into a Stereo WAV (i'd appreciate some good hints and/or instructions to change the AC3 to 6 individual mono wave files, one for each channel) and then encoded that together into a WMV.

@Stebet,

1 question and 1 suggestion:

- how could you feed the .avs to VFAPI? my VFAPI only accepts .d2v or .tpr.... did you use TMPGEnc?... looong way, in this case!, I'm currently using crop & resize in WMEnc to avoid long turns.

- BeSweet 1.4RC7 + GUI 0.6b55 have an option in the Output pulldown to have the "Six Waves" out.

(to next post)

[atx]

[DeXT]

I guess he used the VFAPI Reader CODEC along with an AVI file created with the VFAPI Converter tool. This is a wrapper much like VideoServer plugin or 2Link.

[Stebet]

@atracus
Well.. here is a guide that shows you how to frameserve an .avs to VFApi. It involves adding a registry entry and a .dll to the VFApi Reader dir.
Frameserving guide (http://forum.vcdhelp.com/userguides/87270.php)

I seem to be having a difficulty with BeSweet (1.4RC7) since it crashes when i use the Six Waves option. Anyone else had that problem?

I just finished encoding a 1-CD rip of The Holy Grail at 640x336 with 64kbps VBR stereo audio and so far it seems alright (came out at 703MB's). It is a bit blurred and i'm not sure if there is an automatic keyframe insertion in WMV9 since sometimes in long scenes when there isn't much change the background seems to twitch and get a bit more detail (which i assume is because of new keyframes being added even if there wasn't a scene change). The default keyframe interval is 6 seconds. Any tips on whether i should increase it or reduce it or what?

[atracus]

@Stebet
thanks, the dll works great and for my next rip I'll try to crop & resize with avs, to reproduce your sequence.

Until now (2 partial rips), just to share with you, I used crop + resize + deinterlace from WMEnc, and the result was pretty good - blurred, as you also noticed in yours, but unexpectedly effective on the interlace lines (no combing effects appeared).

I didn't expect a good deinterlace filter after my experiences with RealVideo9, where everything works fine for my standards, but I was forced to use .avs due to the poor Helix deinterlace filter, when compared to Decomb.

[atx]