Anyone used WM9 encoder for any encoding lately?

[bond]

use nic's wm9encoder (http://nic.dnsalias.com/WM9Enc.html) (supports avs input)!

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by lyl797
WMV9 vs DivX 5.x



Let me see:
- No official way to encode to wmv9 on a win98se platform.
- Cannot use virtualdub for encoding, which is the most comfortable and easiest way. (media encoder gives too much limitations)
- Very slow encoding, and the result is - as you said - not better (actually, on high bitrates, it's worse)
- No editing abilities if i know correctly

But the VFW codec is a good idea, i must admit, because wmv9 gives more cleaner images at low bitrates, than any mpeg4 codec, and being usable in AVI would nullify many of the above problems.

[The Belgain]

Would using it in avi not also nullify a lot of the benefits (things like variable framerates, VBR audio, etc... which are not possible in avi)?

This is more a question to amirm really...?

[Tommy Carrot]

Originally posted by The Belgain
Would using it in avi not also nullify a lot of the benefits (things like variable framerates, VBR audio, etc... which are not possible in avi)?

This is more a question to amirm really...?

Yes, perhaps you're right. But currently i wont use wmv9, because i don't care about streaming(not that microsoft would care my opinion:D), and i don't find Windows Media format to be really useful for storaging.

EDIT: By the way, what is this variable framerate thing? Framedropping or what? I'm pretty satisfied, if the encoded framerate is the same as the source's.

[The Belgain]

Yes, by variable framerate I do mean frame dropping. I know that RV9 and WM9 both use it (especially at low bitrate...for DVD ripping bitrates there should be next to no frame dropping).

Could amirm (and karl for RV9) say anything about how bad the quality is hit at low bitrates if frame dropping is disabled (assuming this is possible)?

[-h]

There's no reason you can't use frame dropping in AVI files. XviD and DivX 4/5 already do this.

-h

[The Belgain]

I didn't know DivX and XviD used frame dropping. So do they just duplicate some of the frames and set a tag to tell the decoder to play them twice or what?

[Neo Neko]

Something like that. IIRC it was called a N frame, null frame, or N vop. It is a small chunk of data used to flag that there has been no change and therefor the screen does not get updated. It is not true varriable frame rate. But it is pretty much just as good and alot less complex. Which means weaker systems can handle it better.

[Atamido]

The specs for Matroska kinda support the idea of an "N" frame, but it also supports variable framerate, so there isn't a need to use a null frame.

Does anyone know if the 'variable framerate' used in RM9 and WM9 maitains the same actual framerate and just drops the occasional frame? Or, does it actually vary the frame rate by dropping a frame and moving the next frame halfway inbetween the two positions?

Edit: The "N" frame idea isn't directly supported, but is workable.

[Emmettfish]

Originally posted by amirm
As to your other comments regarding the decoder, I appreciate some of the points you are making. But I think the situation is not as bad as you describe. From what I recall, the source code cost is just $10K. Yes, it is too much for a hobbyist but not for any commercial entity including those shipping Linux, etc.

Most people shipping Linux are not commercial entities, but sysadmins and managers of free FTP servers. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of commercial distributions, but there a lot of non-commercial distributions, too.

As to Xiph source being free, this is true but they are not offering optimized reference source code as we do.

That's because we like to ship portable, usable code for use on as many platforms as possible, not speed demons on a particular 'OS of choice.' You know this. I consider this a feature, not a bug.

There is tremendous cost and expense involved in taking a decoder and making it suitable to run on any integer processor with very little memory (the reference code uses less than 32k RAM btw -- we are talking *kilobytes* here). And I am sure you know that we are not getting rich from $10K licenses :).

Agreed about the costs. Of course, I've never been entirely impressed by the quality of WMA. If only Microsoft were as committed to quality as they were to creating low-footprint integer code.

The other thing to note is that until a big company with deep pockets ships their codec, I would say the jury is out as to whether the technology is really "free" or not. Note that I am NOT saying there are any issues here but that there is a test that we have passed that they have not yet. And of course, they don't have a video codec.

Epic Games, 'Unreal Tournament 2003.'
Electronic Arts, 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.'

Two big companies with deep pockets, shipping our codec. The jury may rise.

Theora (our video codec) will be out soon, but I agree with you; It's vaporware until it shows. However, the idea of a Microsoft employee addressing something as vaporware is a concept that makes me giggle uncontrollably.

As to decoders for other boxes, I can tell you that as Microsoft, we won't be putting out a Linux decoder. It would be like Sony making an Xbox game :). But we provide the tools for anyone else to do the work. This is the best we can do. Other OS platforms are fine and as I mentioned, we already have players for Mac OS X.

There's an old Vulcan proverb: 'Only Nixon could go to China.' Providing the tools is not 'the best you can do.' Your company has a market cap in the mid-to-high uber-assloads. Microsoft can do anything they want, and it's been shown that they can usually get away with it, too.

It looks like the both of us are in for the fight of our lives against MPEG-4. :)

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

[movmasty]

ok, i had some audio file to edit, so i prepared the wavs in sound forge,

1st file all ok, talking audio 22Khz, i used the wma9voice 20kbps

2nd file,a song, 44khz stereo made the nic gui to disappear,always and with different settings,

and i still have a gig of edited wavs on my pc,
i dont want to lose all my work, so i hope that a working gui will come out soon.

[movmasty]

ok, the nic gui works trought avs files,and i had to change filenames to something like 1.wav, only the constant audio bitrates.

but this after i had already encoded all my wavs in sound forge.
strange after installed millennium and then the wmv8, i didnt have the wm8 codec in sf, only the 7, but now wm9 is there, only the constant bitrates however.

wmp64 plays the wma 9 audio files, except one that i encoded with the voice audio codec, neither winamp,
it playes in wmp classic, and in the old media player from windows 3.1(c\windows\Mplayer.exe)

[amirm]

Originally posted by The Belgain
Would using it in avi not also nullify a lot of the benefits (things like variable framerates, VBR audio, etc... which are not possible in avi)?

This is more a question to amirm really...?

Indeed, some features are very hard to implement properly in AVI framework (hence the reason we have not supported in our codecs until now). That's why we are focusing on WMV9 for now as we think we can provide the bulk of the features there. I believe the only feature that won't be supported for WMV9 may be inverse telecine (we are working on this one).

Amir
Microsoft

[billou2k]

I'm a bit late in reading this thread but I'm interested in Microsoft's plans... So Amirm if you are still around...it's for you... or any other clever guy that guessed the answer before me;-)

Microsoft has been developing for several years now its own proprietary video codec solution (of course non compliant with any standard as its proprietary;-) )
Then to finally make money out of it it starts selling hardware devices to install wmv9 at your home.

Then at the same time Microsoft is supposedly doing efforts in standardising the H.26L codec ...
Is it me or it is not a really "clean" policy?

What are their plans as far as h26l is concerned? because i guess they dont really plan just to abandon wmv9...

[Stigma]

Originally posted by -h
There's no reason you can't use frame dropping in AVI files. XviD and DivX 4/5 already do this.

-h

Hoooold on a minute. So your saying new Xvid builds and DivX 5.05 have something equivalent to a 0-frame if the picture is detected to be 100% duplicate (such as with the use of Neuron2's dup filter) ?

I was under he impression that this wasnt possible to do in those codecs. I would love to hear i was misinformed though =)

-Stigma