Anyone used WM9 encoder for any encoding lately? [Archive]

karl_lillevold

27th December 2002, 11:42

Originally posted by amirm
I work for Microsoft so please take this in context. Compared to xvid, you should be able to get the same quality at roughly half the size.
As to Real, Bond's observation regarding our sharpness compared to Real is correct. We do not soften the video like they do and as such, are able to match the source much better. Needless to say, I do not accept that our quality is not as good as Real :). Sharpness is part of the equation unless you are happy with VHS tape instead of DVD :)
I am happy to see Amir insert a little WMV9 flavor to this forum.

MS marketing department's claim over a stock MPEG-4 codec may be true, but after having tried XviD, it is clear significant improvements have been made within the aging MPEG-4 framework. It does not sound like Amir is taking this into account, but fortunately readers of this forum know how to spot such marketing statements for what they are.

I have been and still am strongly encouraging experts on doom9 to run their own experiments instead of taking my or other's statements as true. And it sounds like they do, in fact finding great results for RV9, based on feedback here in this forum.

Snide and false Microsoft statements regarding RV9 quality are ineffective (It does not help to tag on a smiley face). Doom9 readers can themselves evaluate RV9's cababilites.

Previously I have not made any statements about WMV9 in this forum, and I would not have, if it were not for the above post. Of course sharpness is part of the equation. Sharpness was one of the parameters judged by the Keylabs test (http://www.keylabs.com/results/realnetworks/vidperf9.shtml) where RV9 thoroughly beat WMV9 (Beta). Note how clarity was in fact the parameter where RV9 outperformed WMV9 by the greatest margin.

Yes, the test was paid for by RealNetworks, but if you read the test details, you can see it was designed as fair as possible. One of the aspects taken into account was that the WMV9 encoder was not allowed to overspend bits like it normally does for all short clips (very convenient for comparisons, unless the user notices the filesize). With this overspending I am referring to much more than the claimed 5% file overhead in ASF.

RealNetworks supports freedom of choice for platforms, devices, and operating systems, as well as alternative players and encoders. RealVideo 9 runs as well on Linux and OS X as on Win32, and through Helix, binaries will be compiled for any plaform, OS, and device where there is interest.

dattrax

27th December 2002, 11:45

You are more likely to see WM9 on a stand alone player than MPEG4. I'll tell you the reason for this.

WM9 is a complete audio/video/system codec package. There are no .AVI/.OGG wars, no MP3/AC3/OGG for audio and no ASP/non ASP for the video. An example for this would be DivX5.0 Qpel implementation which is non standard. Do you make hardware which decodes non standard streams? I'm not sure if thats wise.

I think that MPEG4 has become too poluted with different implementations, so it just makes it more difficult and less appealing.

Now windows media has bframes and qpel, as well as some features MPEG4 hasn't got, it should be possible to get as good as, if not better than MPEG4

Jim

trbarry

27th December 2002, 15:23

MS marketing department's claim over a stock MPEG-4 codec may be true, but after having tried XviD, it is clear significant improvements have been made within the aging MPEG-4 framework.

Aging? Or still maturing, but with rapidly aging lawyers? ;)

Since I am already quite an Xvid fan I probably did not give WM9 a fair shake or completely objective testing. But for my own purposes compressing down-rezzed HDTV material I could not find those WME claimed improvements. So I stuck to Xvid.

But I'm still very glad to see folks from both the MS and Real video teams here.

- Tom

Didée

27th December 2002, 16:11

When reading the claims of RV9 and WMVV9, I must admit that I am deeply impressed:

Same quality as modern mpeg-4 codecs at half the size!

I am so deeply impressed, I can't tell you.

almost ROFL

Didée

Christo

29th December 2002, 05:35

I compared WMV-9 with DIVX-3 at best possible Video quality settings such az:
WMV-9 100% quality based VBR and DIVX-3 6000kbps(max) Slow Motion. The results were WMV-9 produced file size 3 times (300%) more than DIVX-3 with impeccable Video quality. Well, obviously WMV-9 100% quality based VBR was overkill…

I reduced WMV-9 quality based VBR to 98%. The results were WMV-9 produced file size 50% more than DIVX-3 with video quality again clearly superior to DIVX-3. Zero artifacts or blockiness or blurriness.

Reducing farther WMV-9 quality based VBR to 96% I mached DIVX-3 (6000kbps Slow Motion Codec) in file size. But video quality of WMV-9 was still clearly superior. However the light blockiness in a very high motion scenes occasionally was noticeable. Please note 640x480 WMV-9 was played back at full 24fps on P3 500 MHz with NO post processing.

At 90% quality based VBR, the video quality of WMV-9 was finally comparable to DIVX-3 6000kbps(max) Slow Motion. However the file size of WMV-9 was about 40% less. Funny, the main problems (blockiness) for DIVX-3 Slow Motion Codec were exactly in Slow Motion scenes while for WMV-9 the main problems (blockiness) were in High Motion.

TheXung

29th December 2002, 08:55

:confused: This thread renewed my interest in wm9 and after giving it another shot; I don't know what to make of it. I can say, it's not the same type of comparison that we're use to making. The quality degradations are different; with the mpeg4 codecs, we're use to seeing the noise increase as size gets smaller, with wm9, it gets less detailed, not so much blurry because I don't think mpeg4 can reproduce the same image using postprocessing.

The claim that it produces a filesize of 50%, is something I've yet to see. Going into the lower bitrates, I would say that wm9 does produce more pleasing output than our traditional mpeg4 codecs, but these are bitrates what I'm not interested in. At 1 CDish bitrates, I cannot get wm9 to have the same amount of detail as xvid, though it has less noise around the edges, though at 1 CD bitrates, xvid edge noise isn't bothersome. I would rather have the detail.

To sum it up, I would say this is the vorbis of video codecs, tuned for decent quality at lower bitrates. However I am more of a videophile than an audiophile, so I prefer the MPC of video codecs.

I must admit that I am impressed by the decoding speed of this codec. It is much faster than anything that ffdshow can do, so I assume, there isn't any postprocessing being done. This leads me to think that this is either a wavelet based codec or a JVT type implementation, though the decoding speed and the fact that wm9 cannot attain the same level of detail as other mpeg4 codecs sorta rules out JVT. I guess only amirm can settle what sort of codec is this.

Now windows media has bframes and qpel, as well as some features MPEG4 hasn't got, it should be possible to get as good as, if not better than MPEG4
When was it established that wm9 has either qpel or bframes?

Perhaps, I will revisit this codec the next time I do anime.

The Belgain

29th December 2002, 18:53

Right. A question for amirm about WM9. I know the chances of it being cross-platform are pretty slim (apart from reverse engineering by Linux types), but will this even be truly cross-windows?

According to Microsoft's website the WMA Pro codec only plays surround sound on WinXP and downmixes to stereo in other windows. Is this true? If so, are you surprised that most on this forum don't trust Microsoft enough to use their video technology even if the codec offers very good quality?

Sgt_Strider

30th December 2002, 00:20

Originally posted by TheXung
:confused: This thread renewed my interest in wm9 and after giving it another shot; I don't know what to make of it. I can say, it's not the same type of comparison that we're use to making. The quality degradations are different; with the mpeg4 codecs, we're use to seeing the noise increase as size gets smaller, with wm9, it gets less detailed, not so much blurry because I don't think mpeg4 can reproduce the same image using postprocessing.

The claim that it produces a filesize of 50%, is something I've yet to see. Going into the lower bitrates, I would say that wm9 does produce more pleasing output than our traditional mpeg4 codecs, but these are bitrates what I'm not interested in. At 1 CDish bitrates, I cannot get wm9 to have the same amount of detail as xvid, though it has less noise around the edges, though at 1 CD bitrates, xvid edge noise isn't bothersome. I would rather have the detail.

To sum it up, I would say this is the vorbis of video codecs, tuned for decent quality at lower bitrates. However I am more of a videophile than an audiophile, so I prefer the MPC of video codecs.

I must admit that I am impressed by the decoding speed of this codec. It is much faster than anything that ffdshow can do, so I assume, there isn't any postprocessing being done. This leads me to think that this is either a wavelet based codec or a JVT type implementation, though the decoding speed and the fact that wm9 cannot attain the same level of detail as other mpeg4 codecs sorta rules out JVT. I guess only amirm can settle what sort of codec is this.

When was it established that wm9 has either qpel or bframes?

Perhaps, I will revisit this codec the next time I do anime.

We're almost 1 week away from the release of Wm9 series :). We'll see if it does live up to its claims.

amirm

30th December 2002, 00:22

Let's see if I can answer all the questions posted here:

Quality: this is really up to you all to decide. I will say this though. WMV is tuned and optimized differently for different data rates. While at lower data rates you see us trade distortion for lower resolution (a behavior that average viewer prefers), you will not see as much of this at higher data rates. Indeed, this has been key to acceptance of our codec in digital cinema. Our ability to preserve even noise (e.g.. film grain) has been super important to our success in HD encodings for this market. Double blind tests done by studios show that we outperform all leading codecs at 1080p (1920x108) and 7Mbit/sec on both resolution and subjective quality. Unfortunately, I can not disclose anything more about the test due to their confidential nature so take this for what it is worth. But I will stand behind our ability to produce better quality than any other codec at the same or even lower bit rate/resolution. Of course you should do your own testing and decide as some of you have.

Algorithm: we have not publicly disclosed WMV algorithms. So any information about what techniques we use would be a guess. While Microsoft chairs the JVT standardization effort, WMV is in no way related to JVT. They are completely different animals.

Cross-platform: We have a strong policy to make our codecs available on any platform our customers want. We do not require anyone to run our OS or any OS at all. Internally at Microsoft, we port our codecs to a wide range of hardware and OS platforms from MIPS and ARM CPUs (used in PocketPCs) to Mac OS.

We offer a full porting kit that includes specifications, verification suites, training, etc. for our partners to port our codecs to *any* platform they wish including those with competing OSes. We currently have more than 40 partners who have licensed WMV and are porting it to various chips, processors, and OS platforms.

Since Real has not opened they codecs, I don't understand the question as to whether we are as good as them in this regard. I would say that our porting program is far more broad than theirs to date (we have 200+ non-PC devices that play WMA today!).

Stand-alone players: These players will become available in 2003. In September we announced a (logical) CD-R format with Panasonic called HighMat (http://www.highmat.com) that allows fast playback of compressed content. WMV and WMA are mandatory formats (together with MP3) so you should expect to see a lot of CD and DVD players that can play WMV (many play WMA already).

Karl's comments: Your colleagues and I have been going back and forth in various forums for the last 5 years. Smart people read these things and find some good learning there between all the arrows being thrown and marketing claims. My job is to keep you honest and I am sure you will do the same in return. It is all in good fun (why else would we have this discussion during the holidays and our time off? :)) and interest of the forum.

Amir
Microsoft

Tommy Carrot

30th December 2002, 01:53

If the porting is so easy (and why wouldn't be?), i just hope there will be wm9 encoder on win98 platform, and the fact there wasn't such in the beta version is not the part of the strategy to force everyone to use windows xp. (wheww, what a nice sentence:))

I really think that would be useful to many. (I know about nic's little util, but it always crashed.)

TheXung

30th December 2002, 03:05

While at lower data rates you see us trade distortion for lower resolution (a behavior that average viewer prefers), you will not see as much of this at higher data rates

This explains a lot. This really explains a lot. The technology behind this sounds exciting. I can't wait to see it in it's finished form. It is ashame that reduce resolution encoding was somewhat dismissed or more accurately, being held back by mpeg4 profiles on the xvid mailing list. While I'm sure MS has the best in the field working on and optimizing this codec, my one wish is for the configuration of this codec to be a little more open. While there may have been a lot of testing to fine tune the quality, I would still like a little lee-way to adjust how much sharpness and distortion I prefer. I believe there is no perfect quality optimizing that can be done; on a TV, lower resolution is not as distinguishable as it is on a computer monitor or homemade projector. Without the ability to retain on par sharpness and distortion with xvid, wm9 would be utterly useless to me.

Just out of curiousity, what sort of computer is needed to decode 7Mbit video at HDTV resolutions? Is this something that a single computer can do?

trbarry

30th December 2002, 09:26

Stand-alone players: These players will become available in 2003. In September we announced a (logical) CD-R format with Panasonic called HighMat that allows fast playback of compressed content. WMV and WMA are mandatory formats (together with MP3) so you should expect to see a lot of CD and DVD players that can play WMV (many play WMA already).

If this included the ability to play HDTV resolutions it would certainly be enough to make me give it another try.

I'd love to start encoding my own 1080p (do now) but don't currently have any way to play them except maybe hardware accelerated MPEG-2.

But if the players were limited to 480 lines then I'd probably have much less interest. Will they likely do HD?

- Tom

The Belgain

30th December 2002, 12:38

Well, I just installed the release candidate for WM9 and guess what? In WMP9, when I rip a CD and choose the compression I get a dialog box informing me that WMA now includes a lossless codec, available only on Windows XP!

Will this be the case in WM9 Final? Is there any good technical reason why this is so, or is this just another "incentive" to get peoplpe to give up older MS OSes and move on to XP?

I don't particularly care about the lack of a lossless audio codec since I'm not planning on using wma (flac's fine for lossless, but I don't use lossless anyway). I did a quick wma test and the audio quality was very poor. Still the same old artefacts and very bad stereo image - much worse than Vorbis (probably better than mp3 at this bitrate, though that's not really surprising). This was on a Metallica track, using VBR giving a bitrate of 81, comparing to Vorbis -q 1 which was 82 kbit.

amirm

30th December 2002, 18:43

Originally posted by TheXung
Just out of curiousity, what sort of computer is needed to decode 7Mbit video at HDTV resolutions? Is this something that a single computer can do?

720p (1280x720@24fps) can be decoded on anything faster than P4 2.2 Ghz with a decent graphics card (any modern 3-d card should do -- the main thing we need is high write throughput (fast-write) and nothing else). As a matter of fact, the dell laptop that I am typing this on can easily decode any 720p content. It is nice to have a few HD movies with you when you travel :).

For 1080p (1920x1080), the demands go up. While some content can be decoded on 2.8 Ghz PC, you really need a 3 Ghz system to decode anything you throw at it.

Amir
Microsoft

amirm

30th December 2002, 18:50

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
If the porting is so easy (and why wouldn't be?), i just hope there will be wm9 encoder on win98 platform, and the fact there wasn't such in the beta version is not the part of the strategy to force everyone to use windows xp. (wheww, what a nice sentence:))

We don't support Win98 with our encoder because the bulk of our (traditional streaming) customers use Win2K or XP. These platforms are more reliable and hence the choice. However, the Format SDK itself (which handles decoding and encoding of our format/streams) is supported on Win98. So anyone can develop a Win98 encoder/player if they like.

Amir
Microsoft

trbarry

30th December 2002, 19:16

No comments about whether the stand-alone players will likely handle any HDTV resolutions?

- Tom

amirm

30th December 2002, 19:39

Originally posted by The Belgain
Well, I just installed the release candidate for WM9 and guess what? In WMP9, when I rip a CD and choose the compression I get a dialog box informing me that WMA now includes a lossless codec, available only on Windows XP!
We live in the Windows division. Put another way, our salary comes from the sales of Windows. So yes, we do have to provide an incentive for folks to use our latest OS once in a while. Without it, there would be no fund to develop such technology. Having said this, many times we shy away from supporting our older OS platforms simply because it lengthens our development cycle. The permutations of codecs, SDKs, players, encoders, servers and OS versions can go crazy if we don't watch it. So once in a while we take shortcuts on platforms that are older. We realize not everyone is happy with these choices and I apologize for that.

Note that WMA Lossless content will playback everywhere. The only thing that is XP specific is the ripping capability.

BTW, we just announced a new version of Plus! (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/default.asp)for XP (called Digital Media Edition) that has a general purpose format converter to and from WMA/WMA Pro and MP3. This way, you can rip everything in WMA Lossless and then target other formats at will. Of course, you can also build your own free converter using our SDK. But Plus has a bunch of other features such as Photostory that creates efficient "movies" (based on WMV) out of your still pictures.

Originally posted by The Belgain
I don't particularly care about the lack of a lossless audio codec since I'm not planning on using wma (flac's fine for lossless, but I don't use lossless anyway).[/B]

I appreciate the point of view. But there is something great about not ever having to rip your content again because there is yet another new audio codec. With WMA Lossless (which we call the "never rip" codec) you can maintain your entire library in bit-exact form and covert it to other formats if needed. With hard disks now hitting 200 Gigabytes, it is a shame to leave all that disk space unused :). I know most people in this forum are using the space for video but if you are an audiophile, then a lossless codec is a good thing to consider. For the first time, you can put away the jewel box and be done with the shiny disks. Being an avid audio guy, this is what I do anyway.

As to other lossless codecs, they do exist of course. The advantage of WMA Lossless is that it is one click away in the Media Player 9 instead of having to rip into wav and then converting the files, etc.

Originally posted by The Belgain
I did a quick wma test and the audio quality was very poor. Still the same old artefacts and very bad stereo image - much worse than Vorbis (probably better than mp3 at this bitrate, though that's not really surprising). This was on a Metallica track, using VBR giving a bitrate of 81, comparing to Vorbis -q 1 which was 82 kbit. [/B]

Discussing audio codecs is a bit like arguing whether a blue car is prettier than a black one :). Everyone will have their opinions and preferences. I will say a few things though. Codecs behave differently on different content so I would not necessarily draw any conclusions on one or two clips or at specific settings. While I am pleased to see that you matched the encoding settings by using VBR, it is unlikely that the settings in our VBR match what Vorbis uses even if the file sizes are similar on one or two clips. The extra 1000 bytes that Vorbis had could make a huge difference in how transients sound btw.

Also note that for VBR content, the "bit rate" display in the media player can be inaccurate. So be sure to look at the file sizes and compute it that way rather than trusting what the player reports.

Finally, audio codecs testing can be a strange animal. For example, once you like one, you can easily convince yourself that any other codec doesn't sound as good (even in blind tests!). Let me tell you a funny story about this.

I used to help out with tuning of WMA. The routine was that I would be given multiple versions of difficult clips and be asked which one I liked better. I once had a situation where I was convinced we already had the optimal parameters and that our architect was just making things worse, not better. I was given yet another variation which I was quick to pronounce as being much worse than my "golden reference." It sounded tinnier and bright. To my surprise, the architect announced that the files were identical! Not believing him, I tested the clips again and thought once more that they sounded different. To prove it to him, I did a bit for bit comparison and to my amazement, found the files to be identical :(. The most shocking thing was that when I then listened to them after knowing they were identical, they sounded the same this time! The "big" difference had just vanished. It is amazing what tricks your mind plays on you when it comes to audio :).

Amir
Microsoft

Rash

30th December 2002, 21:12

Ignore me! :(

amirm

30th December 2002, 22:22

Originally posted by trbarry
No comments about whether the stand-alone players will likely handle any HDTV resolutions?
Sorry Tom. I lost track of all the questions :).

We showed a stand-alone reference design by Equator (who makes "VLIW" video processors) at International Broadcasters Conference (IBC) in September that was decoding WMV at 720p. It is up to our hardware partners to decide whether they want to productize such a solution.

Amir
Microsoft

Sgt_Strider

30th December 2002, 22:24

Hey Amir, I'm wondering how well do you think WM9 will compare to xvid when it comes to anamoprhic encodes?

Neo Neko

31st December 2002, 11:37

Originally posted by amirm

Cross-platform: We have a strong policy to make our codecs available on any platform our customers want. We do not require anyone to run our OS or any OS at all. Internally at Microsoft, we port our codecs to a wide range of hardware and OS platforms from MIPS and ARM CPUs (used in PocketPCs) to Mac OS.

We offer a full porting kit that includes specifications, verification suites, training, etc. for our partners to port our codecs to *any* platform they wish including those with competing OSes. We currently have more than 40 partners who have licensed WMV and are porting it to various chips, processors, and OS platforms.

So basically most OS will have a snow balls chance in hell of ever seeing an implementation. Linux, BSD, ONX, BeOS and the decendants of BeOS don't likely have enough dough between the lot of em' to fork over for the development kit and Microsoft knows it. Or might we see unsupported binaries being snuck out from Microsoft insiders? It's great and all to know that it could be ported. Just sickening to know that it likely never will.

temporance

31st December 2002, 16:13

Probably one of the main reasons that MS would never open up the WM specs is that they open themselves up to patent infringement suits. Note: I'm not saying or even insinuating that MS would deliberately infringe any patent, but there are just so many in audio/video compression that they may have stepped on someone's toes without even knowing it.

Another reason could be that they would lose control of the standard - you can't protect a standard itself with patents, only the ideas and inventions used by that standard. If WM was to become successful and remain closed, then hackers would open the standard themselves (as they have before).

So which is it?

amirm

31st December 2002, 18:52

Originally posted by Neo Neko
So basically most OS will have a snow balls chance in hell of ever seeing an implementation. Linux, BSD, ONX, BeOS and the decendants of BeOS don't likely have enough dough between the lot of em' to fork over for the development kit and Microsoft knows it.

I am happy to say this is not true. We have some of the smallest hardware vendors in the world shipping WMA players. Surely if the technology had been expensive these vendors would not have been able to afford the fees.

BTW, the fee for the porting kit itself is trivial (comparable to the salary of a good engineer for a month or two :)). For this fee, you get reference source code that is in ANSI C (making it easy to use simpler compilers for specialized processors). The code is 100% OS neutral and is ready for porting (i.e. it is available in integer-only form). We also provide a ton of verification tests to make sure the implementation is correct. And we provide on-site training by the engineers who designed the codec. In other words, this is quite a bargain when you consider what you get.

Likewise, the royalties for the codecs themselves is less than any MPEG codec such as MPEG-4, and MP3 and we do NOT charge any "use" or content fees (as does MPEG-4 for example). The royalties also cap at a very low amount so you could pay one fee and ship all the devices you want. And of course, on Windows there is no cost to use our technology.

Put another way, if cost is an issue, we rank way on top, not the other way around. Yes, the technology is not free but it is the next best thing :).

Amir
Microsoft

Ramirez

31st December 2002, 20:56

Does MS plans to implement some kind of forced DRM Policy with WM9?
Or it's really a matter of distance future to worry about?

Thanks.

amirm

1st January 2003, 02:32

We have always taken a hard stance on DRM being optional. It is totally up to the content owners to decide to protect their content or not (we provide them the tools, they get to decide when and how to use them). We have no plans currently to change this policy -- with WM9 or otherwise.

If you are encoding your own personal content, the output will be unprotected unless you explicity choose to DRM it. In other words, you can pretend DRM does not even exist.

Happy new year everyone!

Amir

Neo Neko

1st January 2003, 07:20

Originally posted by amirm
BTW, the fee for the porting kit itself is trivial (comparable to the salary of a good engineer for a month or two :)).

As I thought. Snow balls chance in hell.

Originally posted by amirm
For this fee, you get reference source code that is in ANSI C (making it easy to use simpler compilers for specialized processors). The code is 100% OS neutral and is ready for porting (i.e. it is available in integer-only form). We also provide a ton of verification tests to make sure the implementation is correct. And we provide on-site training by the engineers who designed the codec. In other words, this is quite a bargain when you consider what you get.

Likewise, the royalties for the codecs themselves is less than any MPEG codec such as MPEG-4, and MP3 and we do NOT charge any "use" or content fees (as does MPEG-4 for example). The royalties also cap at a very low amount so you could pay one fee and ship all the devices you want. And of course, on Windows there is no cost to use our technology.

What if I told you we did not necessarily care that much about encoding on this issue. More about decoding. Is it to much to expect Microsoft to put out even a reduced functionality decoder only module like everyone else in the world? While my windows computer is outnumbered 3 to 1 I would use that one windows computer to encode in this forsaken format and codec if I had the ability to simply watch it elsewhere. To date that is why no microsoft format or codec has ever gotten any regular use by me and many others. Sure I test em for sh1t5 and giggles every once in a while. But they are of no real use to me. Even Real Networks for all their problems allow playback on other OS.

Originally posted by amirm
Put another way, if cost is an issue, we rank way on top, not the other way around. Yes, the technology is not free but it is the next best thing :).

Amir
Microsoft

Xiph already has you beat in one area. And they are hard at work in the other areas.

What I would really like to know is why in the last 3 versions of Windows Media Player has Microsoft reduced it's usability and configurability as a media player. And in it's place put in stupid futile features such as encoding? What ever happened to the Windows Media Encoder? Who came up with the bright idea to make a player that encodes? Granted it is a boon to mankind just like the ability to send email from MS-Solitare would be. But is it to much for Microsoft to make a player with more player related features and better player features than previous versions? Microsoft so often misses the big picture. Well maybe not so much that. More that they have a very different big picture. One no one but Microsoft wants.

Nothing against you man. Just the Microsoft fud.

Neo Neko

1st January 2003, 07:30

Originally posted by amirm
We have always taken a hard stance on DRM being optional.

Which is why it was enabled by default in many previous versions of windows media player that offered such functionality? Bit devicive.

Sirber

1st January 2003, 17:10

Will WM9 be avalible as a VFW codec?

ChristianHJW

1st January 2003, 18:11

Originally posted by Sirber
Will WM9 be avalible as a VFW codec? ... if hell freezes over maybe ;) ...

amirm

1st January 2003, 21:33

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Which is why it was enabled by default in many previous versions of windows media player that offered such functionality? Bit devicive.

"On by default" is not the same as mandatory which was the question posed. However, you are correct in that where possible, we try to balance the needs of the consumers and commercial content providers. But we do draw the line somewhere and that line is to give the user the option to turn off DRM. Other technologies go to one extreme or the other. We feel that by taking the middle road, we get the benefits of both approaches. Our customers get access to content they wouldn't have any other way (e.g. Peter Gabriel's "Up" album in 5.1 WMA Pro before becoming available in any other surround format) while not limiting their choice.

And yes, the approach is not without criticism and the amount of time it takes to explain our position on new year's day :).

Amir
Microsoft
Microsoft

amirm

1st January 2003, 21:39

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... if hell freezes over maybe ;) ...

Be careful what you wish for :). Also funny to see your signature next to this comment:

"...; Make sure AVI and VfW have seen the end of their days ..."

I feel like I am being bashed by a "wet noodle" :).

Amir
Microsoft

temporance

1st January 2003, 21:49

Originally posted by amirm
And of course, on Windows there is no cost to use our technology.

Really? I had no idea that Windows was a freeware OS. Where can I download my free copy of Windows XP?

amirm

1st January 2003, 22:08

Originally posted by Neo Neko

...And in it's place put in stupid futile features such as encoding? What ever happened to the Windows Media Encoder? Who came up with the bright idea to make a player that encodes? Granted it is a boon to mankind just like the ability to send email from MS-Solitare would be. But is it to much for Microsoft to make a player with more player related features and better player features than previous versions? Microsoft so often misses the big picture. Well maybe not so much that. More that they have a very different big picture. One no one but Microsoft wants.

Nothing against you man. Just the Microsoft fud.

I appreciate the comments Neo but I don't understand the reference to "encoding". Yes, the media player can encode WMA files it rips from CDs. Are you suggesting that we remove CD ripping? I assume not since millions of people like this feature. Other than ripping, Media Player has no other "encoding" function. Perhaps you are confusing us with QT player which encodes video. BTW, Windows Media Encoder 9 is alive and well. You can download it today.

As to usability, it would be hard for me to say that a single media player will please everyone in the world. But I will say that with version 9, we are doing better than we have ever done in getting people to like the player. We are faster in start up than just about any player now (including Winamp), have unique features such as lossless CD ripping, and lots of other usability improvements (such as one click user rating in the media library).

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.

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

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.

Amir
Microsoft

ChristianHJW

1st January 2003, 22:24

Originally posted by amirm Be careful what you wish for :). Also funny to see your signature next to this comment:
"...; Make sure AVI and VfW have seen the end of their days ..." I feel like I am being bashed by a "wet noodle" :).
Amir Microsoft

:) ... sorry, i am not a native english speaker, so i have problems understanding what this means.

In any case i know 2 things :

1. VfW is old and outdated and needs to be replaced, and if ever possible by a real open standard like UCI or gstreamer codec API. We should never ever base the future of our open source constraints on an API created by a comany with financial interests, whoever this is ... they might decide one day they dont need it anymore and abandon it ;) .

2. WMV9 will never be released in either a VfW or a UCI version. Microsoft will prevent this with all their might, even if somebody would leak the internal API they would forbid use of the codec outside of Microsoft tools, even with legal measures. Same is valid for Real IMHO, even if i admit i dont understand the full scope of Helix yet ... maybe Karl could tell if its possible to use Real codecs with other encoding tools ( i seem to remember he is still waiting for a response from his company if a VfW codec would be within the Helix license or not ;) .. ) ....

Sgt_Strider

1st January 2003, 22:29

Originally posted by amirm
I appreciate the comments Neo but I don't understand the reference to "encoding". Yes, the media player can encode WMA files it rips from CDs. Are you suggesting that we remove CD ripping? I assume not since millions of people like this feature. Other than ripping, Media Player has no other "encoding" function. Perhaps you are confusing us with QT player which encodes video. BTW, Windows Media Encoder 9 is alive and well. You can download it today.

As to usability, it would be hard for me to say that a single media player will please everyone in the world. But I will say that with version 9, we are doing better than we have ever done in getting people to like the player. We are faster in start up than just about any player now (including Winamp), have unique features such as lossless CD ripping, and lots of other usability improvements (such as one click user rating in the media library).

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.

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

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.

Amir
Microsoft

When you mean you can download the codec today, you mean the release candiate and not the final right???

The Belgain

2nd January 2003, 01:34

Ok. First of all I'd like to thank amir for all his posting despite being bashed quite a lot. It's just there is quite a lot of resentment towards Microsft in general, he's been very helpful despite this and I hope he doesn't leave the forums because of it.

Secondly, I have the latest version of Windows Media Encoder, and it crashes when I try to open any input file (avi, mpeg, ...). I'm running Win2k SP3. I dunno what the problem is. Ok, it turns out WMP 9 also crashes on opening many of these files (they all work fine in all other players). Any idea what this bug is?

Also, can the Encoder open avs scripts?

Rash

2nd January 2003, 01:41

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
When you mean you can download the codec today, you mean the release candiate and not the final right???

Come on! They'll be really "stupid" if they make the final version paid.

You know, let me tell you something I don't get. The Intel C++ compiler. Intel says it can compile any code and make it optimized for Pentium 4 SSE2 instructions. That it would look you code for what it can optmize and do so. But this compiler is paid! (Very well paid, if you know whay I mean) So what's the point? Wouldn't it be better for Intel if any programmer developed P4 optimized programs?

OK, I know this is not of anyone's business around here. I know you Microsoft and Helix guys wouldn't like to comment this because I'm talking about another company. But I just don't understand Intel strategy. Just don't forget you guys have great free competitors. ;)

Neo Neko

2nd January 2003, 07:44

Originally posted by amirm
I appreciate the comments Neo but I don't understand the reference to "encoding". Yes, the media player can encode WMA files it rips from CDs.

A player that encodes is missleading. If that is the goal call it a media center.

Originally posted by amirm
Are you suggesting that we remove CD ripping? I assume not since millions of people like this feature. Other than ripping, Media Player has no other "encoding" function.

I am not so adverse to the rippig feature. And if people use it and like it good for them. I can think of much better software for them to use. But getting people to use the right and best software for the job is almost an impossibility. My main caveat with all WMP versions after 6.4 is that there is no menu item like the 6.4 propperties menu which allows you to adjust filter properties in the directshow chain. I have no idea how many times I use that feature alone under 6.4. A lot does not seem to adequatly describe it. The ripping features are just an example of the little things I did not need that we gaind at the major loss of alot of functionality.

Originally posted by amirm
Perhaps you are confusing us with QT player which encodes video. BTW, Windows Media Encoder 9 is alive and well. You can download it today.

Aaaaah QT player. If it were not out of nescessity it is another player I would never use. But now that MPEG4 is hitting hard the QT player will likely be depredicated as there will be many players capable of the new format out of the box. Perhaps except for WMP. As for WMP9..... it will never touch my PC without great protest unless of course it re-introduces the capability to moddify the filter chain and other newer usefull features.

Originally posted by amirm
As to usability, it would be hard for me to say that a single media player will please everyone in the world.

True.

Originally posted by amirm
But I will say that with version 9, we are doing better than we have ever done in getting people to like the player.

There are people and then there are people. I know I am not alone in wondering what the real use in upgrading to WMP9 is. I could get and use the codecs without it. But I preffer not to use them on a regular basis either. Out of curiosity though. How is it judged "how much people like the player"? It would be interesting to see how the numbers were calculated. I see lots of room for skewed data here. If WMP8 was not forced on my system with the OS I would stick to 6.4 alone. I guess at least I can be thankfull that Microsoft has still afforded us this small reffuge. But I wonder how long it will last.

Originally posted by amirm
We are faster in start up than just about any player now (including Winamp),

Start up speed means little to me. Even if a program took several times longer to start up but offered better features/functionality I would use it in a heart beat. But how is load speed determined when a large portion of the program and it's resources are always constantly loaded? And since that is often the case it would be quite absurd for it to be otherwise. Just an unfair advantage. :p

Originally posted by amirm
have unique features such as lossless CD ripping,

I have tons of software that can do that though. And with just about any codec I choose. Whether it be monkies, shorten, optimfrog, LPAC, etc, etc, etc. Plus Winamp can play all of them. And now FooBar2k can play many of them as well. WMP can't play any of em IIRC.

Originally posted by amirm
and lots of other usability improvements (such as one click user rating in the media library).

Libraries are all good an well. I like them to organise my albums which I have encoded to Vorbis on my HD. But I fail to find the use in a rating for the library. I know what I like, and as long as the library lets me find it then I am happy. I don't want to take the time to go file by file etc rating the songs.

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.

You seem to miss a key issue here. Most of the commercial entities dealing with Linux are mostly server based. Where is the use in such thing for a server? As has been said before, and has held true. Microsoft very much has a Monopoly on the desktop. The use of such things is on the desktop/workstation. With no hopes of really being able to penetrate a market in which the main player is so deeply entrenched and quick to dirty pool to hold that position where is the incentive to do this? Something like Linux is more than a corporation. Lets say for fun redhat bit on Microsoft's line. They are the Icon of corporate Linux. When you say Linux most non Linux users shout redhat! Redhat has built their market on providing server grade OS systems that run rings around any Microsoft system for speed/stability/configurability/upgradability etc. How could they use an investment in such a kit to their advantage? In the bigger picture keep in mind that Linux is much more than redhat. Each of my 3 PC that run Linux run a different distribution. Only one of which is remotely commercial. Microsoft knows exactly what they are doing. :devil: They extend a line that they know any possible competitors could not really avail themselves of even if they wanted to. When someone cries foul Microsoft can sit back and flash a big toothy grin saying "Hey we are not excluding anyone. No monopoly like business here. They just could not fork over the dough.". Lets say all us users of all non MS OS got together and took up a collection on paypal or some such to get the needed funds and then had guys make libraries for decoding on *NIX varriants, BeOS varriants, QNX, etc. How could we then legally distribute such decoders and what would Microsoft's reaction be if we just gave them away for free? :confused: Is it to much to ask for rudamentary playback libraries? Microsoft knows what will happen if they don't provide such. The actual Microsoft products will be reverse engineered(My won't Microsoft love that) and the growing resentment to Microsoft would continue to bloom. Such a simple concession as a rudamentary decoder library would go a looooooooooooooooooooong way. Microsoft was providing WMP binaries for Solaris. Why not others. ;)

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

Ah you missed it. Xiph has plenty of optimised code and integerised decoders. Perhaps not as optimised as possible. But it is progressing at a rapid pace. But the code compiles easily on pretty much any ARM, MIPS, Alpha, Amiga, PPC, general Intel, etc processor on the market. Hey I was playing Vorbis on my Dreamcast just the other day.

Originally posted by amirm
And I am sure you know that we are not getting rich from $10K licenses :).

Nor are you coming up short for the lease on those luxury sports cars either. ;)

Originally posted by amirm
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.

*cough*AOL*cough* :D It is verry free indeed. AOL spent quite alot of time investigating this along with Xiph themselves. And to keep you abreast Emmett and his crew are currently in mid Alpha testing with their first video codec that will be out of beta before the year is out. Shortly after July if the schedual he disclosed to me is able to be adhered to. It is being built on an existing/prooven codec that produces results at least as good as the current WMV codec in stable distro. So unless they severly screw something up Theora will be a contender.

Originally posted by amirm
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.

Which one?

Originally posted by amirm
And of course, they don't have a video codec.

ON2 gave it to them.

Originally posted by amirm
As to decoders for other boxes, I can tell you that as Microsoft, we won't be putting out a Linux decoder.

Then my decision has been made for me. I can't in good concience no matter how nice it may be use a codec of that nature. I would not care about encoding. Just an unsupported decoder library. Something that would not put any real strain on Microsoft and would go along way to increasing the codecs useage as well as the companies immage. Even if I had to use a statically linked binary player ala Quicktime it would definatly make such codecs a viable option to me. It's not like I am asking for a complete Directshow implementation for Linux/Solaris/BeOS/Mac OS etc.

Originally posted by amirm
It would be like Sony making an Xbox game :).

Or Sega making a Nintendo game. Everyone knows plumbers and hedgehogs are mortal enemies and could never co-exist. Or could they? :D I have a nice entertainment center setup. My only gripe is that ATM if I want to play Sonic Adventure 1 I have to power up my Dreamcast, but to play Sonic Adventure 2 I have to power up my Gamecube. Both of which sit on top of my PS2. Just no room or desire left over for an Xbox though. :D I suppose I could find the dreamcast ISO on line if I was desparate enough. But that sort of things would tend to go against my ethics and morals. ;)

Originally posted by amirm
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.

Then why not BeOS, Linux, QNX, or BSD for x86 chipsets at least. I already know your answer and the real answer. But I mean honestly. Mac OSX is BSD based *NIX. The ammount of porting required would be almost nill. The only real work would be the GUI interface. A play/pause/stop button and a seek bar in a rectangle is all I need. It's not like I'm asking for Microsoft Linux here. <Dr. Evil voice>"Somebody throw me a frickin bone here. Ok?"</Dr. Evil voice> One simple x86 BSD compatable decoder library would allow playback on BSD, Linux, BeOS, and QNX no porting for each nescessary.:sly:

Neo Neko

2nd January 2003, 07:56

Originally posted by The Belgain
Ok. First of all I'd like to thank amir for all his posting despite being bashed quite a lot.

The only one here who could remotely be considdered as being bashed is Microsoft. Amir's presence here is very welcome. :)

Originally posted by The Belgain
It's just there is quite a lot of resentment towards Microsft in general,

Indeed.

Originally posted by The Belgain
he's been very helpful despite this and I hope he doesn't leave the forums because of it.

Yes indeed.

Please do not construe my quizzitive nature to many of Microsoft's dubious practices as an insult to Amir. Microsoft employs many bright individuals who are often stiffled by the company themselves. WMV9 is good and all. But some people like myself have to take portability into account as to the codec of their choice. I would go beyond testing WMV9 and actually use it if only I could decode it. ;)

amirm

2nd January 2003, 08:30

Neo,

Our goal for Media Player and compression technologies is to provide technology for the masses. When someone sticks a CD in their XP machine, they expect it to play and nowadays, rip into a music library. They like rating systems because that allows them to find things quickly (I always rate my songs after ripping so that I can create a dynamic query for “play anything with 4 stars” and have it just play my favorites). While you and I might like the Dshow filter properties feature of 6.4 player, 99.999% of our customers wouldn’t know what a Dshow filter is let alone want to set its properties :). So for good or bad, the masses do not have the same requirements or preferences that you state.

If people don’t like our player, they can always take our free SDK and build their own as have Real, AOL Winamp, MusicMatch, etc. That’s the beauty of the PC/Windows. It is a programmable device.

As for Xiph using the old stuff from ON2 to make a competitor to WMV 9, let me tell you a story. A guy goes to the butcher and asks how much the steak is. The butcher says $10/pound. The customer says the store across the street has them for $6/pound. The butcher asks why he wouldn’t go and buy it from the guy across the street. The customer says that the other guy doesn’t have any! The thing is, we have a state-of-the-art video codec that is shipping now, and is carefully designed to be implementable on many architectures. What someone will have someday is not relevant to what is going on now. They have a claim, we have the real thing. Would you stop buying an AMD machine just because Intel says they will have a 5 Ghz CPU one day? The only thing that matters is what they both have today.

If I can answer any other questions about our technology, just go ahead and ask. I am happy to answer them. I worry that arguing about philosophical topics is not adding much value to the forum.

Thanks,
Amir Majidimehr
Microsoft

P.S. Just in case you think we are just a bunch of anti-Linux/Unix guys, do a search on my name in Amazon.com...

charact3r

2nd January 2003, 15:26

Amir (and others),

I guess there's no point arguing about how open WMV9 is. In time, if it is proven useful, source code will be released by some insomniac teenage hacker, or by a disenfranchised employee of one of MS's 40 partners. That's assuming MS doesn't do the right thing and GPL it first. ;-)

The real question that remains is the performance of WMV9. No-one on this forum has yet said "WOW, WMV9 ROCKS!!". People are saying that RM is good for anime (due to its H.264-style in-loop filter), but no-one's advocating WMV9, yet.

Can any independent person provide annecdotal or better evidence that Microsoft's technology is any good? We need it to be benchmarked against something like DivX 5 Pro which is a good, well-known implementation of MPEG-4 SP / ASP. (Or a known version of xvid for that matter).

From my point of view I can only say that WMV9 seems to causes a different type of degradation to other DCT-based codecs. Its quantisation noise appears to have a wider frequency distribution, so instead of conventional blocking or ringing you see blocks with a raised white-noise level. Or perhaps this is how their postprocessing works. Either way, this could be argued to be more pleasing to the eye.

TheXung

2nd January 2003, 21:38

From my point of view I can only say that WMV9 seems to causes a different type of degradation to other DCT-based codecs. Its quantisation noise appears to have a wider frequency distribution, so instead of conventional blocking or ringing you see blocks with a raised white-noise level. Or perhaps this is how their postprocessing works. Either way, this could be argued to be more pleasing to the eye.

Sounds like you've already done your own testing and conclusion drawing. Why the need for other's opinions? Others can't draw any more accurate conclusions.

However, if everyone remembers, there was a significant quality difference between Vorbis 1.0 and it's release candidates, so I would reserve my judgement for the final release.

Neo Neko

2nd January 2003, 23:44

Originally posted by amirm
While you and I might like the Dshow filter properties feature of 6.4 player, 99.999% of our customers wouldn’t know what a Dshow filter is let alone want to set its properties :). So for good or bad, the masses do not have the same requirements or preferences that you state.

When it comes to MPEG4 codecs accessing the filter properties can often be usefull. My whole point is why did they have to remove it in the first place? Did it cause WMA ripping to crash?

Originally posted by amirm
If people don’t like our player, they can always take our free SDK and build their own as have Real, AOL Winamp, MusicMatch, etc. That’s the beauty of the PC/Windows. It is a programmable device.

I will not go in on that scenario. There are flaws in it though. When it comes to almost everything on the x86 PC architechture MS always has a conflict of interests. But nothing that need be discussed here.

Originally posted by amirm
As for Xiph using the old stuff from ON2 to make a competitor to WMV 9, let me tell you a story. A guy goes to the butcher and asks how much the steak is. The butcher says $10/pound. The customer says the store across the street has them for $6/pound. The butcher asks why he wouldn’t go and buy it from the guy across the street. The customer says that the other guy doesn’t have any!

Hey ON2's VP3 could easily hold it's own with WM8 in everything but encoding speed. It is still avalible today. And that is saying something.

Originally posted by amirm
The thing is, we have a state-of-the-art video codec that is shipping now, and is carefully designed to be implementable on many architectures.

Yes WMV8. And eventually WMV9. But from what I have seen the only place they are clearly better than the aging VP3 is in the arena of encoding speed. WMV9 is ok but to date it is not some groud breaking earth shattering improvement. In all other areas VP3 has a nice advantage. I can decode it on just about any OS I want for example. ;)

Originally posted by amirm
What someone will have someday is not relevant to what is going on now. They have a claim, we have the real thing. Would you stop buying an AMD machine just because Intel says they will have a 5 Ghz CPU one day? The only thing that matters is what they both have today.

Yes I would. It depends on time frame. But aprox. 6 months is not an outrageous length of time to wait. Now I will not be holding my breath waiting for Tarkin because I would die of asphixiation by the time it is released. But the revamped VP3 just by virtue of it's previous performance is almost 100% guaronteed a good thing.

Originally posted by amirm
If I can answer any other questions about our technology, just go ahead and ask. I am happy to answer them. I worry that arguing about philosophical topics is not adding much value to the forum.

Philosiphy is not my goal here. I would just really like some fresh insight on why Microsoft the corporation(not the people) feel that support for any OS/system they do not have a major stake in will be the death of them. Something so tiny as decoding.

Originally posted by amirm
Thanks,
Amir Majidimehr
Microsoft

P.S. Just in case you think we are just a bunch of anti-Linux/Unix guys, do a search on my name in Amazon.com...

I know of many Microsoft related/employed people who use/dabble in BSD/Linux/Qnx/BeOS/Unix/etc. I never said it was because of you. Rather the policies of the company. You unfortunatly were just a handy guy to toss some questions at. ;) If it were up to the majority of Microsoft's employees/coders we would have WMV9 decoders for every OS under the sun and such things as MS Office for BSD/Unix/Linux/BeOS/etc. The reason there will be a player for WM9 on MacOSX is due to the fact that Microsoft has a large stake in apple and sales of products like MS Office for Macintosh pull in a nice bit of revenu for Microsoft. And the reason that there is no Windows for Mac is that at least on the OS front Microsoft has relied on Apple to provide innovation for them for years. Apple along with BSD.

http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200106/0396.html
http://david.weekly.org/audio/amir.php3
http://www.wave-report.com/1996%20Wave%20issues/wave612.html
One Thousand Questions and Answers About Unix Systems
Amir Majidimehr / PB, 1998 (NYP On Order)

:sly: I know who you are. :sly: I have seen you around before. And that is why I say you are welcome here. As a member of Microsoft I do not hold you responsible. Don't take my stabs at Microsoft as anything personal. But can you blame me for making the case to someone in your position that I would like the ability to simply play back WMV9 encoded content under OS other than Windows or Mac OSX. I would not even care if it would not play DRM content. Since I would never use such a feature myself. Just so that I could play the material. It's not that much to ask. Just give them libWM-9.x.x.so and let them write the GUI for it. All I ask is to be able to play it without some major wikkid voodoo hacking or convoluted virtual machine or Windows API emulation setup.

temporance

3rd January 2003, 00:27

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Just give them libWM-9.x.x.so and let them write the GUI for it. All I ask is to be able to play it without some major wikkid voodoo hacking or convoluted virtual machine or Windows API emulation setup.
Now where's the fun in that? Some people love the challenge and thrill of illegitimacy!

Originally posted by TheXung
Sounds like you've already done your own testing and conclusion drawing. Why the need for other's opinions? Others can't draw any more accurate conclusions.

However, if everyone remembers, there was a significant quality difference between Vorbis 1.0 and it's release candidates, so I would reserve my judgement for the final release.
Good points, but like a lot of others, I'm too impatient to wait for the jury's verdict on wmv9. My own conclusions are based on recent demos by MS and its partners who were using the latest internal code.

I know for a fact that lurkers and contributors to this forum have seen the wmv9 standard and are clever enough to see the potential for this codec. These are the people who can help us all with their opinions.

For example, dattrax (Jim) opined,
Now windows media has bframes and qpel, as well as some features MPEG4 hasn't got, it should be possible to get as good as, if not better than MPEG4.
This is the most interesting comment so far in this discussion.

Neo Neko

3rd January 2003, 01:53

Originally posted by temporance
Now where's the fun in that? Some people love the challenge and thrill of illegitimacy!

Groan. But when you are right you are right. It is what will happen if some sort of decoder is not provided. An illegitamate hack will be found. Like using the MS DLLs under linux to decode the content. It has been done before. And doubtless will be done again. But what I would not give for a legitimate decoder. Of which I doubt Amir would have any major qualms with. But there is corporate policy that dictates otherwise. :(

Originally posted by temporance
Good points, but like a lot of others, I'm too impatient to wait for the jury's verdict on wmv9. My own conclusions are based on recent demos by MS and its partners who were using the latest internal code.

I know for a fact that lurkers and contributors to this forum have seen the wmv9 standard and are clever enough to see the potential for this codec. These are the people who can help us all with their opinions.

For example, dattrax (Jim) opined,

This is the most interesting comment so far in this discussion.

With any lossy codec there are at least two things that must be considdered. Technology and tuning. Doubtless Microsoft has put up lots of money to buy or get the latest technology inside. That is the first thing they always do. But my main concern lies in tuning. WMA for an example seems slow to progress in this arena. It might have all that technology under the hood. But a company like Xiphophorus using public domain and discarded algorythms have succedded to produce a codec that holds it's own easily even with the best of the big boys. And it is in large part due to an insane ammount of tuning. I also subbmit for your parousle MPC or MP+. MPC produces quality superior to pretty much every lossless codec at the mid bitrate range. But the technology it is using is pre-MP3! MPEG1 Layer 2 mostly to be more precise. Yet for this range it outperforms MPEG1 layer 1-3, MPEG2 Layer 1-3, and MPEG2 AAC which use the exact same technology or better!!

Xvid and Divx are yet another example of this. Divx has the technology front as far as MPEG4 goes covered in spades. Xvid on the other hand produces output as good or quite often better with less technology fluff and more hard core attention to detail. The fine tunings. Things like Modulated quantizers or individual quantizer controls. Better motion estimation, curve controls, etc.

WMV has always been optimised for the low low end much like WMA. Often achieving acceptable results in that range. But the over all codec performance has always been lacking. When WMV9 final is out we shall have to see if all these high-rez tunigs come through for Microsoft. It has always been my oppinion that on many things Microsoft's over all attention to detail is often lacking. Again no fault of Amir. It extends far beyond the media division and is most often found in the general software division.

Here is a question Amir might be able to answer though. I have heard from people I trust that at least on internal code there are switches that can be used that cause WMV9 to output ISO-MPEG4 streams. Is this true. If so is it something we might see though possibly not publicised on the final release version? Also will this final version be format locked as all previous versions.(Another peeve I have always had against Microsoft)

31 Flavas

3rd January 2003, 03:40

Originally posted by Neo Neko

Or Sega making a Nintendo game.Hehe, except, ... Sega DOES make Nintendo games!

Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 and NBA 2k3 and the Sonic Mega Collection game (if you need some sonic goodness) to name a few GameCube titles... :)

Come on Microsoft, you can do it!

RadicalEd

3rd January 2003, 03:51

Neo knows that, it was to put irony in what amir said about sony and nintendo ^_^;

31 Flavas

3rd January 2003, 03:54

Originally posted by RadicalEd

Neo knows that, it was to put irony in what amir said about sony and nintendo ^_^; Ahh, I should have known! :) <smacks forhead>

amirm

3rd January 2003, 04:18

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Here is a question Amir might be able to answer though. I have heard from people I trust that at least on internal code there are switches that can be used that cause WMV9 to output ISO-MPEG4 streams. Is this true. If so is it something we might see though possibly not publicised on the final release version?

There is no way to get the WMV 9 codec (or 8) to produce MPEG-4 compliant bitstreams. The two technologies are so different that you basically need the code for each to produce such a result. This may have come from our prior variations of MPEG-4 where we could indeed, generate MPEG-4 compliant streams. But this is no longer true.

While I am typing this, here are some remarks on your other comments:

1. My feelings are not hurt at all and I don't take any comments personally in this forum. And I very much appreciate the welcome.

2. We did not "remove" the filter properties from Media Player 9. The 7.X through 9.0 media players do not use Dshow for their core as the 6.4 player did. The 6.4 player in many respects was just a simple UI on top of the filters so it exposed a lot more of that functionality. People miss the 6.4 player sometimes but I must say, this is the first time I have anyone miss the filter properties :).

3. You say that On2 tried to keep up with WMV 8. WMV 9 outperforms V8 from 15 to 50%, depending on content. Having gone through the exercise of making WMV 9 better than V8, I have to say that it was a much harder job than outperforming less capable codecs such as MPEG-2/MPEG-4. So anyone who thinks they can make On2 better, has their work cut out for them.

4. I see a lot of quality claims wrt to WMA and WMV but it is very hard for me to address them without seeing the clips, encoding parameters, tools used, etc., etc. One wrong parameter and you have apples and oranges comparison. The devil is always in the details.

I implore everyone to do their own testing and not draw quick conclusions from casual tests. WMV has been compared and tested by experts alike and it always, and I mean always outperforms MPEG-4 derived codecs, not matter what their origin is (Divx,, etc.).

5. I keep seeing the comment that WMV is a "low-end" codec because we do well at streaming rates. But this is an improper generalization. WMV is scales very nicely with data rate and resolution because it is optimized differently for various "profiles" (another reason to not generalize its quality from encoding at one or two data rates). As a matter of fact, most of the kudos we receive are at the higher end of the spectrum. Here are some examples:

We have people projecting HD WMV on 30+ foot screens at data rates that are the same as standard resolution MPEG-2 on DVDs. See BMW Films Release (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Oct02/10-30MotownPR.asp). And people can't tell the difference from film in surveys done after the viewing. There is tremendous amount of film grain in the "Shadows" movie and all of it is preserved like no other codec can. Sundance film festival just added WMV as one of its approved submission formats for independent films. No other compressed format is allowed (all the other formats are broadcast quality tape and 16/32-mm film).

Here is a super long thread on avsforum on people encoding with beta version of WMV 9 their 1080p content. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=171590&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Here are some comments on the quality:

"Amazing. On my 2.8Ghz 1Gb machine it plays well Simply amazing quality"

"All I have to say is "Wow!" .. I'm looking very enthusiastically towards HDTV"

"<In the voice of Janice from Friends> Oh, my god! </In the voice of Janice from Friends>

That rocks! Now there's no turning back, either I have to emmigrate to the states or get me a HD pimp."

You get the picture I think :). BTW, this is where I ran into Nic.

Finally, note that we have made some incremental quality improvements from Beta to RC so the results should be even better (and especially so if the slider on the Encoder is pushed all the way to the right).

Amir
Microsoft

TheXung

3rd January 2003, 05:39

From reading Amirm's posts, I get the impression that he sees the alternative codecs (real, on2, wmv8) as above the mpeg4 ones whereas around here we all have concluded that the alternative codecs do not hold their own against a well tuned mpeg4 codec like xvid or divx. I wonder where this inconsistency comes from. We have either become too "use" to the look and artifacts of divx and xvid too make an objective conclusion or companies are refusing to treat these "outlawed" codecs with a fair shake, turning a blind eye to the development of these outlawed codecs. (I am awared that Divx today is not illegal, just that many businesses still associate the DivX name with an illegal codec).

@Amirm
What sort of clips are you refering to when you make quality statements about WM9? It is not like we can just download the WM9 demoes, reencode them using divx and then make a fair comparison; we would need the originals that they were encoded from. I have done my own testing and the quality claim doesn't hold up. The only thing I can think of that can make wm9 better is that in a variable quality encode, the higher quant scenes don't need as many bits to match divx and so can devote more bits to the low quant scenes. But when I try out a codec, I first look at how it performs at a given quality and not at it's bitrate controling or multi-pass compression. Those are only further investigated if I am satisfied with the strength of the encoder.

Perhaps the presence of any macroblocks really disturbs people and we have just gotten use to them for fast action scenes. Maybe that is why all of the alternate codecs choose to produce a softer image.

trbarry

3rd January 2003, 06:59

I would love to see a high bit rate codec shootout. ;)

- Tom

Sgt_Strider

3rd January 2003, 09:30

Originally posted by trbarry
I would love to see a high bit rate codec shootout. ;)

- Tom

That would be nice :).

temporance

3rd January 2003, 11:42

Originally posted by amirm
As a matter of fact, most of the kudos we receive are at the higher end of the spectrum. Here are some examples:

We have people projecting HD WMV on 30+ foot screens at data rates that are the same as standard resolution MPEG-2 on DVDs. See BMW Films Release (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Oct02/10-30MotownPR.asp). And people can't tell the difference from film in surveys done after the viewing. There is tremendous amount of film grain in the "Shadows" movie and all of it is preserved like no other codec can.
Amir, what was the actual bitrate? AFAIK, DVD bitrate can be as high as 15Mbit/s. Film grain (additive noise) cannot be compressed at all at lower resolutions (entropy - it looks like white noise), but a HDTV scan of small format fast celluloid (e.g. 16mm) would produce coarser grain and hence more compressible material.

Sundance film festival just added WMV as one of its approved submission formats for independent films. No other compressed format is allowed (all the other formats are broadcast quality tape and 16/32-mm film).
Apologies for appearing cynical, but would that be the Sundance film festival that is sponsored by Microsoft?

Here is a super long thread on avsforum on people encoding with beta version of WMV 9 their 1080p content. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=171590&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Here are some comments on the quality:
...

These people are enthusing because they have never seen HDTV before, not because it's WMV9. What is being done here is reencoding from MPEG-2 using a more modern codec. (Sound familiar, doom9 readers?) And the new bitrate is approximately half the ATSC MPEG-2 bitrate (max 19Mbit/s, typically 10-12Mbit/s for 720p).

Finally, note that we have made some incremental quality improvements from Beta to RC so the results should be even better ...
Look forward to seeing the RC. And would be even more interested in two things:
A technical explanation of why WMV9 should be better than, say, MPEG-4 - what are the extra tools that improve the quality (we know it has qpel and bframes).
An independent shootout done by someone from the doom9 pages (doom9 himself?)

Thanks Amir for your contributions here - I'm sure you must be busy with your upcoming release, hope you stay around.

Nic

3rd January 2003, 14:01

Ive updated the WM9Encoder on my site with the latest (i think) codec ( http://nic.dnsalias.com )

Re-download the codec as well, not just the installer.

Cheers,
-Nic

Rash

3rd January 2003, 15:56

Neo Neko

4th January 2003, 10:56

Originally posted by amirm
There is no way to get the WMV 9 codec (or 8) to produce MPEG-4 compliant bitstreams. The two technologies are so different that you basically need the code for each to produce such a result. This may have come from our prior variations of MPEG-4 where we could indeed, generate MPEG-4 compliant streams. But this is no longer true.

Too bad. Now that you mention Nic I think he was the one I had heard that from. ;)

Originally posted by amirm
2. We did not "remove" the filter properties from Media Player 9. The 7.X through 9.0 media players do not use Dshow for their core as the 6.4 player did. The 6.4 player in many respects was just a simple UI on top of the filters so it exposed a lot more of that functionality. People miss the 6.4 player sometimes but I must say, this is the first time I have anyone miss the filter properties :).

This is the first time you have ever heard of anyone missing the filter properties? WTF? :eek: I take it you have not been hovering around video encoding forums such as this alot. I am not the first. Nor am I the last. Hopefully I will imagine all your time was tied up with improving WM9 over WM8's lack luster performance. ;) But if there is no use for such things then why do the Microsoft decoders themselves implement configurable decoder properties? What is the use in such things if one can not access them? Surely there must be a secret key combo or some string in the registry that can be altered to allow access in the new versions. If not perhaps there could be a patched or alterd binary to allow such. Because it is a reasonably big deal.

Originally posted by amirm
3. You say that On2 tried to keep up with WMV 8. WMV 9 outperforms V8 from 15 to 50%, depending on content. Having gone through the exercise of making WMV 9 better than V8, I have to say that it was a much harder job than outperforming less capable codecs such as MPEG-2/MPEG-4. So anyone who thinks they can make On2 better, has their work cut out for them.

You loose some credibility points there for me. DXN made such claims with Divx5 yet could not deliver. Microsoft has made such claims in the past without validating results to back them up. WM9 final will be tested. But claims of up to 50% improvement, heck even 15-20% are down right unbelievable. That is unless advanced aliens from another solar sytem are helping you with your algos. It sounds like so much hype. If all such claims were true I could losslessly compress a 3 hour DVD movie to a 250Mb CD in perfect quality

Originally posted by amirm
4. I see a lot of quality claims wrt to WMA and WMV but it is very hard for me to address them without seeing the clips, encoding parameters, tools used, etc., etc. One wrong parameter and you have apples and oranges comparison. The devil is always in the details.

If you stick around I am sure we can provide you with such clips for WM9 final. As for WM8, well since it did not have that many details to be configured, and the output was generally over all inferior to the output produced by inferior MPEG4 codecs I did not keep any clips on hand.

Originally posted by amirm
I implore everyone to do their own testing and not draw quick conclusions from casual tests. WMV has been compared and tested by experts alike and it always, and I mean always outperforms MPEG-4 derived codecs, not matter what their origin is (Divx,, etc.).

There will be testing to be sure. But one mans expert is another mans fool. Most in the past have tried to prove such things with slanted stats of which Microsoft is no stranger. Can you provide us with any links to 3rd party conducted, non Microsoft sponsored tests which can confirm this?

Originally posted by amirm
5. I keep seeing the comment that WMV is a "low-end" codec because we do well at streaming rates. But this is an improper generalization. WMV is scales very nicely with data rate and resolution because it is optimized differently for various "profiles" (another reason to not generalize its quality from encoding at one or two data rates). As a matter of fact, most of the kudos we receive are at the higher end of the spectrum. Here are some examples:

We have people projecting HD WMV on 30+ foot screens at data rates that are the same as standard resolution MPEG-2 on DVDs. See BMW Films Release (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Oct02/10-30MotownPR.asp). And people can't tell the difference from film in surveys done after the viewing. There is tremendous amount of film grain in the "Shadows" movie and all of it is preserved like no other codec can. Sundance film festival just added WMV as one of its approved submission formats for independent films. No other compressed format is allowed (all the other formats are broadcast quality tape and 16/32-mm film).

I think I will deffer to temporance on that. I sense lots of room for skewed stats and the influence of pockets full of cash.

Originally posted by amirm
Here is a super long thread on avsforum on people encoding with beta version of WMV 9 their 1080p content. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=171590&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Here are some comments on the quality:

"Amazing. On my 2.8Ghz 1Gb machine it plays well Simply amazing quality"

"All I have to say is "Wow!" .. I'm looking very enthusiastically towards HDTV"

"<In the voice of Janice from Friends> Oh, my god! </In the voice of Janice from Friends>

That rocks! Now there's no turning back, either I have to emmigrate to the states or get me a HD pimp."

You get the picture I think :). BTW, this is where I ran into Nic.

Not everyone there is an over commited zealot but there are several. If you got some of them to convert I would be impressed. But far from convinced. Lets face it they are every where. We will just have to see for ourselves when the time comes. ;)

Nic

4th January 2003, 11:57

Too bad. Now that you mention Nic I think he was the one I had heard that from.
You never heard that from me! WM8 & WM9 (Oh and probably WM7 too) are supposedly very very different (although I (like most I assume) know very little about there exact inner workings)

However, I have stated that they're old codecs (MPEG-4 v1/2/3) are very similar to compliant MPEG-4...the ffmpeg source code (if you can navigate it) shows this clearer than I can explain.

Also, can we please not hold poor Amir accountable for all the "injustices" that some believe Microsoft have done. Im sure he's here just to enjoy the forum, he shouldn't have to justify the MS Corp. I'd hate to push a member away, because he knows everytime he posts he's going to get bombarded. (Im not saying that's what anyone in particular is doing BTW).

Cheers,
-Nic

Rash

4th January 2003, 15:16

Originally posted by trbarry
I would love to see a high bit rate codec shootout. ;)

- Tom

I encoded a hollywood studio logo using the best quality from DivX, XviD, WM9 and RV9. The quality is really impressive on all of them, but the smallest file is DivX.

DivX - 5.3Mbs
WM9 - 5.7Mbs
RV9 - 6Mbs.
XviD - 6.7Mbs

Sorry I can't provide you guys the clip because it wouldn't be legal. :)

Atamido

4th January 2003, 16:16

Originally posted by Rash
I encoded a hollywood studio logo using the best quality from DivX, XviD, WM9 and RV9. The quality is really impressive on all of them, but the smallest file is DivX.
Just because the quality is set to 100% on all codecs doesn't mean that they will all look the same. You will need to compare each of the clips to the original to determine which one looks best. While DivX produces the smallest file and XviD the largest, it may just be that XviD found ways to use more bytes to get a little bit more quality.

Please compare the quality of each and post back.

trbarry

4th January 2003, 16:31

Here is a super long thread on avsforum on people encoding with beta version of WMV 9 their 1080p content. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ show...20&pagenumber=1

Here are some comments on the quality: ...

The comments at AVS are true and the quality of the sample clip was impressive. You can still download it and see (recommended).

But you've got to remember that those of us who hang out on the AVS HTPC forum are mostly using home theater PC's with high rez larger screens to view DVD's at upscaled HD resolutions. So in addition to being about WM9 those comments also reflected:

1) A comparison of HDTV resolutions to DVD, which is quite favorable, and, maybe more importantly

2) Comments on seeing HDTV resolution video in a scenic Hawaaian setting of some very beautiful girls wearing only very skimpy bikinis. ;)

So now go read those comments again. ;)

- Tom

Neo Neko

5th January 2003, 00:20

Originally posted by Nic
Also, can we please not hold poor Amir accountable for all the "injustices" that some believe Microsoft have done. Im sure he's here just to enjoy the forum, he shouldn't have to justify the MS Corp. I'd hate to push a member away, because he knows everytime he posts he's going to get bombarded. (Im not saying that's what anyone in particular is doing BTW).

Cheers,
-Nic

No need to say. I know I am a pessimist when it comes to MS alot of times. But not without reason. And notice I am not giving major kudos to anyone at all in those recent areas. DXN has the most recent account to date of over hyped performance. I am leaving the judge out on WM9 for now. But I am getting skeptical. WM9 final will be given a fair shake soon. Rest assured it is all in good nature. Till then I'll keep nudging Amir for that libWM-9.x.x.i586.so stripped down decoder for the *NIXs. WM9 looks like it could be fun. But again a large group of people are being left out completely once more. :( BTW Nic I am getting ready to test yer new version tonight or tomorrow a bit. If only my linux media center could simply decode it to my tv. *nudge* *nudge* ;)

Neo Neko

5th January 2003, 00:30

LOL@TOM
Originally posted by trbarry
2) Comments on seeing HDTV resolution video in a scenic Hawaaian setting of some very beautiful girls wearing only very skimpy bikinis. ;)

Well at least they are not doing what DXN did with the porno. Or perhaps I should say to bad. :D ;)

Rash

5th January 2003, 06:02

Originally posted by Pamel
Just because the quality is set to 100% on all codecs doesn't mean that they will all look the same. You will need to compare each of the clips to the original to determine which one looks best. While DivX produces the smallest file and XviD the largest, it may just be that XviD found ways to use more bytes to get a little bit more quality.

Please compare the quality of each and post back.

In fact I did that and the quality on all videos are extremely close (no to say equal) to the original. Just some encoding artifacts around moving objects over a still background on DivX and XviD (but they are really really imperceptible, unless you really want to see them :)).

WM9 and RV9 are perfect to my eyes.

I know this might not be a great test, but this is the test I usually do to new codecs for myself. :)

trbarry

5th January 2003, 07:37

Well at least they are not doing what DXN did with the porno. Or perhaps I should say to bad.

Uhhhhhh, is there an important HDTV resolution Divx download sample that I missed? ;)

- Tom

RadicalEd

5th January 2003, 08:49

HD porn, lmao
Once I saw a womens diving competition on an HDTV in Circuit City and it was .. mm :O

Psymaster

5th January 2003, 12:57

Originally posted by RadicalEd
HD porn, lmao
Once I saw a womens diving competition on an HDTV in Circuit City and it was .. mm :O

The picture or the women?

temporance

5th January 2003, 13:47

Originally posted by RadicalEd
HD porn, lmao
Once I saw a womens diving competition on an HDTV in Circuit City and it was .. mm :O
What sort of diving?!?! :p

amirm

5th January 2003, 19:31

Nic,

Thanks again for the warm welcome to the forum. While I don’t mind have lengthy discussions in person, typing all of these replies is quite time consuming and while I could afford it during my holiday, I am about to go to work on Monday and will be flying out to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Conference to boot. So I won’t have the opportunity to spend as much time here. That’s why I was trying to focus the discussions around specific questions or actual benchmark tests.

Quickly answering a few of the questions posed:

The BMW films project was encoded at 8 Mbit/sec, using constant bit rate (CBR). Yes, we would have preferred VBR encoding for these but another post house did the work and for some reason decided to use CBR. As you can imagine, using 8 Mbit/CBR puts us at a serious disadvantage to DVD’s VBR encoding but we sill managed to create great results and preserved the aforementioned film grain. We were encoding 2.2 times more pixels than DVD with lower (maximum) data rate and hard ceiling on bit allocation! BTW, the sound track was WMA Pro 7.1 so we had more audio channels than DVD.

Comment was made that 16 mm film grain may be easy to encode. I don’t see how the correlation in film grain is going to improve from frame to frame just because the grain is larger in 16mm. But even if this is true, the grain still requires additional bits to encode.

Imagine a black area which in film domain is full of colorful dots. This detail will require a lot more bits to encode than the solid black area shot using HDcam video camera. Still, this is not the point I was making. My point was that competing codecs with strong in-loop filters (Real, H.264) completely filter out such detail. Other simpler codecs like MPEG-2/MPEG-4 attempt to encode the grain, run out of bits, and you get distortion that looks nothing like the original. We manage to get good efficiency to encode the film grain without resorting to strong filters. You can always add a pre-filter to our codec if you want to get rid of the source noise but can’t create detail that is already lost (i.e. can’t do the inverse).

Neo asked for independent tests showing we are better than MPEG-4. Here is one reference to tests done by PC Mag by Jan Ozer who is a long time reviewer of codec technology, author of a number of books on multimedia and video compression who btw, is traditionally very hard on Microsoft: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,704,00.asp

Here is one quote from his article: "The second, more critical issue is that MPEG-4 video quality has consistently ranked behind that of Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies".

As with any other test, you could argue with how the testing was done, who did it, what tools they used, etc., etc. and hence the reason I don’t reference such things often. But you (fairly) asked for more data and here is one piece. Take it for what it is worth. Note that this comparison was against WMV8 and not WMV 9.

Let me finish by saying that you all have access to our technology. My only request which I repeat again is to use it long enough to get your own opinion of it. You don’t have to fork out a penny to get this knowledge. As a minimum, you will have some hard data to beat me up with next time :).

Thanks,
Amir

temporance

5th January 2003, 21:53

Originally posted by amirm
Thanks again for the warm welcome to the forum. While I don’t mind have lengthy discussions in person, typing all of these replies is quite time consuming....
Your time is really appreciated, thanks Amir.

My point was that competing codecs with strong in-loop filters (Real, H.264) completely filter out such detail. Other simpler codecs like MPEG-2MPEG-4 attempt to encode the grain, run out of bits, and you get distortion that looks nothing like the original. We manage to get good efficiency to encode the film grain without resorting to strong filters.
These are interesting points. It seems that the industry is starting to recognise that different techniques are better at different bitrates, for example loop filtering is better for lower bitrates but not useful (and even undesirable) at higher rates.

So, your codec has no loop filtering, ergo it is probably not as good as Real or H.264 at lower bitrates. But this doesn't matter since on these forums we're interested in higher bitrates. The absence of loop filtering also backs up your claims for a more lightweight decoder.

I'd love to have an open, technical discussion about WMV9. Let's make an analogy with cars. All are car-lovers on this forum. Most just like to test-drive the cars and see how they perform. Some like to look under the hood and discusss whether we want ABS, v8, rear-wheel-drive, etc (that's me). Some even want to know if they can soup up the car by tweaking the engine management or altering the fuel. And most of us want to be able to drive our chosen car on non-Microsoft roads without invalidating the warranty. ;)

Now Microsoft's much-hyped new car is due off the production line and a few of us have already taken the prototype for a spin. Others of us are frustrated at the sealed hood and censored pages in the spec. We're guessing and trying to learn things by deduction and would love it if you told us why WMV9 should be better than standards-compliant codecs. Having said that, I'm sure we're all looking forward to a good long drive of the final release.

karl_lillevold

5th January 2003, 23:15

Originally posted by temporance
These are interesting points. It seems that the industry is starting to recognise that different techniques are better at different bitrates, for example loop filtering is better for lower bitrates but not useful (and even undesirable) at higher rates.

It is interesting to note that it seems Microsoft is alone against the rest of the world on whether in-loop filtering is useful or not. H.264, jointly developed by the ITU and MPEG, has in-loop filtering. If you look at the list of participants in ITU and MPEG, you will find that it is almost everyone working or having an interest in video compression. Repeated experiments by the participants have found that a high quality, adaptive in-loop filter, significantly improves compression performance (since the encoder does not have to constantly re-encode edges and ringing).

In H.264, the in-loop filtering is highly adaptive, variable, and tuned such that it does not hurt performance at high bitrates, and it is even customizable by the encoder. So in this respect, I disagree with Amir, who says "My point was that competing codecs with strong in-loop filters (Real, H.264) completely filter out such detail."

However, the in-loop filter in H.264 is extremely compute intensive, probably around the same as a full decode, because it needs to adapt to image content. It requires extensive optimizations to not completely sink a decoder. I think this is a very likely reason why a codec might choose not to use an in-loop filter with the adaptivity needed.

Originally posted by temporance
So, your codec has no loop filtering, ergo it is probably not as good as Real or H.264 at lower bitrates. But this doesn't matter since on these forums we're interested in higher bitrates. The absence of loop filtering also backs up your claims for a more lightweight decoder.

Now over to RV9. It sounds like many in this forum have found that it can stand on its own and more against the competition, at the high bitrates most oftentimes used here. And even though it is slower than previous generation codecs, similarly to WMV9, HDTV 720p and 1080p decode is possible on P4 2.4+ GHz systems, especially with hyper-threading or multi-CPU systems, since the core decoder is fully multi-threaded (which at least WMV9 Beta did not appear to be).

and a little addition:
Originally posted by amirm
Here is one quote from his article: "The second, more critical issue is that MPEG-4 video quality has consistently ranked behind that of Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies".
I like the full sentence better :)
"The second, more critical issue is that MPEG-4 video quality has consistently ranked behind that of Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies, RealNetworks' RealVideo 9, and Sorenson Media's Sorenson Video 3."

amirm

6th January 2003, 00:12

Regarding in-loop filters, a conclusion was drawn that we do not use in-loop filters. But if you read my post, you see that I never disclosed what we do or do not do (wrt to in-loop filters or otherwise :)). I simply said that technologies that opt for strong in-loop filters, tend to demolish detail that is noticeable at high resolution and quality levels. This is definitely true of H.264. Anyone who thinks otherwise, has not done enough testing of H.264 (as the chair of the H.264 standards group, I assure you that we keep an eye on the qualities of this codec :-).

Karl says that in-loop filters are accepted as a good technique in compression circles. I partially agree with this. The benefits of in-loop filters are definitely there at lower bitrates *and* resolution. But recent HD testing (subjective and objective) shows that at least in the case of H.264, the strong filter is damaging to the picture detail. Film grain is lost and so is resolution. Using temporance’s car analogy, in-loop filters seem to be like soft shocks. They give great ride at low speed but high-speed cornering seems to suffer.

Note that RV9's filtering appears even stronger than H.264 (or less adaptive). It also tends to be unstable at times, resulting in picture detail that comes and goes (with motion) which can be very annoying when you are looking at a large HD images on a projector/big-screen HD set (same thing is happening at lower resolutions but is harder to spot). So while RV9 may allow the user to encode at high resolutions, I do not consider the output to be considered "HD" if "HD" is defined as picture that always has better picture detail than SD resolution image. MPEG-2 at SD resolutions is preferable to RV9 “HD” sometimes because of its stable output. Reading the reports on RV9 at SD resolutions in this forum, seems to bear out the same conclusion as evidenced by the number of requests to "turn off the post filter" in RV9.

As to temporance's comment that lack of in-loop filter means we are not as good in lower bit rates, this is again not correct. As I mentioned in other posts, WMV has a number of algorithms that kick in at various bit rates and resolutions. Indeed, we are quite a bit more aggressive at lower bit rates in trading off resolution/detail for typical compression artifacts. I will not disclose how we do this (i.e. whether it is due to in-loop filter or something else). But I will say that our performance gap with MPEG-4 is even higher at lower bit rates.

Related to above, at 320x240 resolution and lower, we have a frame interpolator which uses optical flow analysis (i.e. tracks every pixel individually to figure out where it would have been in missing frames). This allows us to encode at say, 10 fps, and then playback at 30 fps. This gives us another unique advantage since it takes less bits to represent 10 fps versus 30. If you take this into account, our performance advantage becomes even higher at lower resolutions.

As to CPU usage, while Karl is hoping for faster machines to play their HD clips, I am typing this on a Dell laptop which comfortably decodes 720p WMV9 with 6 channel WMA Pro audio! Needless to say, any desktop machine bought in the last two years comfortably handles WMV9 720p. We also play 1080p on 3 Ghz P4 (2.8 Ghz can also decode most clips). To put this in context, we are decoding 24, 2-Megapixel images (1920x1080) per second and sending them to the GPU – this is a ton of data to handle and move to the frame buffer!

Amir
Microsoft

oddball

6th January 2003, 00:20

There is one HUGE probelm with WMV9 (and RMV9). Lack of support for SPDIF AC3 (Or DTS) output. It's one area in which MPEG4 variants gets my vote. I don't use a 5.1 PC speaker set. I output using AC3 passthru to my AC3/DTS reciever and let that send to some good 5.1 hi-fi speakers. WMV9/RMV9 etc *ALL* do surround sound by sending each channel to the outputs of a 5.1/6.1 audio card. Not SPDIF passthru (As this would require the signal to be encoded to AC3/DTS realtime. Something that is not quite there yet. Although I do believe someone on this forum is working on such a scheme. All I can say to that though is that it would put additional CPU stress on the PC. So bang goes any chance of playing such files on a P3 700 without bringin the system to it's knee's).

I will always prefer MPEG4 for this very reason.

Please correct me if I am wrong on this one.

The Belgain

6th January 2003, 00:43

Needless to say, any desktop machine bought in the last two years comfortably handles WMV9 720p.

Not quite: I have a 1100 MHz Athlon (with DDR memory) which was pretty much top of the range when I bought it exactly 2 years ago, and it can't quite decode the 720p WM9 bikini clip realtime (I get about 20 fps decoding, but the audio stutters horribly and the video occasionally stops completely for a second or so before going on). Most people buying a desktop 2 years ago would have been going for an 800 Duron or Celeron, so that claim doesn't quite hold.

Also, why do I not get "smoothish" playback? With an XviD clip at that res, I get slightly slow playback, but the audio plays fine and the video stays in synch (just drops a few frames per second)? I tried in both ZoomPlayer and WMP9 (doesn't work at all in WMP6.4).

RadicalEd

6th January 2003, 00:59

Originally posted by Psymaster
The picture or the women?

both ;O

Originally posted by amirm
Needless to say, any desktop machine bought in the last two years comfortably handles WMV9 720p.

just like Belgian said, I could barely playback the Bikini clip on this 1ghz Athlon w/ 384 sdram that I bought a year and a half ago :\

amirm

6th January 2003, 02:23

I stand corrected. Perhaps "any" was too strong of a word :). WMV9, 720P requires P4 2.2 Ghz equiv. performance. I agree not everyone has been buying such machines for the last two years.

On the issue of S/PDIF, this is kind of correct at the moment. There are some interim solutions though. Nvidia AMD chipset does have an on-board hardware AC-3 encoder (similar to what is in Xbox btw) which converts the multichannel system sound (i.e. WMA Pro) into Dolby AC-3 on the fly. So there is no CPU hit for this.

If you don't have an AC-4 encoder in your system but set your system audio config to stereo, WMA Pro on the fly converts its multi-channel output to (stereo) Matrix surround (through both S/PDIF and analog outputs). So any external reciever with Dolby Pro Logic should get a surround experience, but of course, it will not be as good as straight WMA Pro.

Note that MPEG-4 does not bring any solution by itself to the issue of S/PDIF. As a matter of fact, MPEG-4 has nothing to do with Dolby and using AC-3 creates a non-compliant MPEG-4 stream. What you are saying is that the tools allow you to create non-MPEG-4 streams by embedding AC-3 in AVI or similar container together with MPEG-4 video. Same approach can be used for WMV 9 although the tools are not quite there to do this just this minute.

Finally, AC-3 at 384kbps uses up a lot of your storage space (~30% at 1.3 Mbit/sec total rate). You can encode in WMA Pro at half the data rate and use the savings to make the video look better. Sure, for now, you would have to listen to it in Matrix surround but when you upgrade your sound card, you get your discreet output back and still have the bit savings.

Amir
Microsoft

karl_lillevold

6th January 2003, 02:27

Originally posted by amirm
Regarding in-loop filters, a conclusion was drawn that we do not use in-loop filters. But if you read my post, you see that I never disclosed what we do or do not do (wrt to in-loop filters or otherwise :)). I simply said that technologies that opt for strong in-loop filters, tend to demolish detail that is noticeable at high resolution and quality levels. This is definitely true of H.264. Anyone who thinks otherwise, has not done enough testing of H.264 (as the chair of the H.264 standards group, I assure you that we keep an eye on the qualities of this codec :-).

But recent HD testing (subjective and objective) shows that at least in the case of H.264, the strong filter is damaging to the picture detail. Film grain is lost and so is resolution.

Hmm, this is interesting. I always thought of the development of H.264 as a collaborative effort, where participants (generally) try to contribute such that the result turns out to be a better standard. Based on what you say here, if true, it seems Microsoft has held back information that would have made H.264 even better than it already is.

amirm

6th January 2003, 04:52

Karl, the accusation is disingenuous and makes assumptions not in my post.

As you well know, H.264 is on a march to finish the standard, not to re-write the algorithm with every new piece of data. The goals of H.264 (good quality at any computational price) have been met and the organizers are anxious to finish the standard.

Now, if you are telling me that it is news to H.264 experts that in-loop filters reduce video resolution in some cases, then I would say you don’t know the same experts we do :). After all, if users in this forum can detect such a feature from casual testing (as in softness in your codec), experts in the field would know it in a heartbeat.

Regardless, the information that I talked about has been sent to JVT as a "liason" report by the people who ran the tests (Microsoft did not conduct the tests or owns the results). So nothing has been kept back.

Amir
Microsoft

temporance

6th January 2003, 09:25

Originally posted by amirm
As to temporance's comment that lack of in-loop filter means we are not as good in lower bit rates, this is again not correct. As I mentioned in other posts, WMV has a number of algorithms that kick in at various bit rates and resolutions. Indeed, we are quite a bit more aggressive at lower bit rates in trading off resolution/detail for typical compression artifacts. I will not disclose how we do this (i.e. whether it is due to in-loop filter or something else).
Reading between the lines here, and picking up on other comments and observations I've made, I think this means that you do use an in-loop filter at low bitrates. In other words, yours is simplest form of an adaptive in-loop filter which is turned on/off according to bitrate/resolution. RV9 and H.264 have much more sophisticated adaptive loop filtering and their filters are also likely to be turned off completely at high bitrates. OK, so they may need more tuning but effectively we all have the same technology.

On film-grain, we all agree that, at high bitrates, it would be desireable not to filter out the film grain on the output of the decoder. But it would be a good idea to remove film grain by filtering in-loop as the grain is not correlated between frames and not useful for motion compensation. So one could envisage a decoder where two different post filters are used: one for the decoder output and one for the MC loop. Perhaps WMV9 does this, no-one will ever know. ;)

But I will say that our performance gap with MPEG-4 is even higher at lower bit rates.
Aha! So the quoted (and much hyped) performance figures would be based on low-bitrate performance!! Implying that for DVD rips, WMV9's performance is similar to DivX (MPEG-4).

Related to above, at 320x240 resolution and lower, we have a frame interpolator which uses optical flow analysis (i.e. tracks every pixel individually to figure out where it would have been in missing frames). This allows us to encode at say, 10 fps, and then playback at 30 fps. This gives us another unique advantage since it takes less bits to represent 10 fps versus 30.
This is the sort of trick that appeals to marketing types, or people who don't have much experience of video, and is typical of the ideas proposed by newbies on these forums. Given, it could reduce jerkiness by providing some consistent motion between frames. At best though, it makes the video look even more processed and artificial, and at worse low-bitrate video coding artifacts cause the interpolation to do very strange things. If it does work well, we are sure to see people applying the technique to the output from other decoders - so it's not really a pro-WMV9 argument. It's like telling me your car comes with optional seat covers when I still don't know what engine it has. Having said that, congratulations on getting it working and I am sure to have a play with the new toys!!!

-h

6th January 2003, 18:38

On film-grain, we all agree that, at high bitrates, it would be desireable not to filter out the film grain on the output of the decoder. But it would be a good idea to remove film grain by filtering in-loop as the grain is not correlated between frames and not useful for motion compensation.

Sure, PNS for video instead of audio. However this would harm the PSNR values that video people in the field obsess over (often to a fault in my opinion).

This is the sort of trick that appeals to marketing types, or people who don't have much experience of video, and is typical of the ideas proposed by newbies on these forums. Given, it could reduce jerkiness by providing some consistent motion between frames.

Temporal interpolation is an old trick, but would be very effective for low-bitrate encodings (actually it would help at any bitrate if done well-enough, format support through side information would be a great aid). I know Alexis Tourapis published a couple papers on low-cost temporal interpolation, as well as being a recognised expert on optimising block-based motion compensating video encoders. The fact that he's been working for Microsoft as a visiting researcher for some time now gives me a good feeling about the internals of WMV9, much better than WMV7/8.

-h

amirm

6th January 2003, 23:08

Temporance,

I admire your desire to gather information by “reading between the lines.” But as before, the information in my posts is not sufficient for you to arrive at conclusions that you are stating. I repeat again that I never said we do or do not use in-loop filter or any other techniques. We may know about algorithms that others do not that work better than in-loop fitlers. But then again, may be not. The only thing you know for certain is that we haven’t disclosed what we have :).

Aha! So the quoted (and much hyped) performance figures would be based on low-bitrate performance!! Implying that for DVD rips, WMV9's performance is similar to DivX (MPEG-4).

So let me understand this better. You are agreeing that we have a codec that is twice as good as MPEG-4 at say, 300Kbps. But that once the data rate gets to 1 Mbit/sec and resolution climbs to 720x480, the quality difference becomes zero??? I know you are more logical than this :).

The day our codec looks as bad as Divx “at DVD rip” rates, is the day I change my name and learn to walk backwards :). I am that confident of quality of our codec, regardless of the data rate and resolution you pick.

"This [frame interpolation] is the sort of trick that appeals to marketing types, or people who don't have much experience of video, and is typical of the ideas proposed by newbies on these forums… At best though, it makes the video look even more processed and artificial"

How do you think a $100,000 Snell and Wilcox standards converter works? When you watch BBC programming on PBS, do you think it looks "processed and artificial"? Upsampling from (BBC’s) PAL 50 Hz to NTSC at 60 Hz requires an advanced interpolator like the one that we implemented. Years of research have gone into "proper" upsampling techniques. Calling them "marketing" features ignores the reality of the science and technology already available.

Sure, there are cheap “upsamplers” that use simple cross fades between frames and produce the results that you talk about. But that’s not what we have.

Now, I am not going to tell you that the technique works perfectly all the time (we do have limited MIPS to work with). But the experience is far better than the picture you are painting.

Amir
Microsoft

temporance

7th January 2003, 00:20

So let me understand this better. You are agreeing that we have a codec that is twice as good as MPEG-4 at say, 300Kbps. But that once the data rate gets to 1 Mbit/sec and resolution climbs to 720x480, the quality difference becomes zero??? I know you are more logical than this :).
No, I just know that if you are going to quote a 50% improvement then you are going to base that maximum on the best possible scenario. Your [marketing department's] claims have to be taken with a pinch of salt for now :)

How do you think a $100,000 Snell and Wilcox standards converter works?
I know how S&W products work. They use costly motion estimation (phase correlation - although the algo isn't so important) and advanced interpolation schemes implemented in FPGA's, hence the expense (and heat dissapation). It is because I know how hard it is to do this job well that I am sceptical about the performace that can be achieved in sub-real-time on a PC and with a less-than-perfect source. Still, this is low-bitrate video we're talking about, not broadcast-quality.

bond

7th January 2003, 23:42

I dont want to make promotion for m$ but at their homepage (http://microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/Jan03/01-079SeriesFinalReleasePR.asp) (Series9 Final Release) they write:

The terms enable licensees to develop implementations of Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series codecs in a wide range of environments ... and to include the Windows Media codecs in their products in any file container and at costs significantly lower than for other technologies ... There is also a significant content use fee for MPEG-4, while there are no content use fees for the Windows Media Audio and Video codecs ...

... By enabling the use of Windows Media codecs independently of ASF, software vendors that support encoding, editing or playing back content in containers such as AVI or MPEG can quickly and easily include support for the superior compression of Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series in their applications.wm9 content in avi, ogm... sounds interesting :)

RadicalEd

8th January 2003, 01:09

I too was wondering about that. I came to the conclusion that I must be misreading and it probably was to be taken to mean something like Premiere's WMV export plugin could be created for programs that can also handle mpeg and avi. Not sure though, I'll be waiting eagerly to hear amir's clarification of it :\

Rash

8th January 2003, 03:13

So, is it true that the "final" version of the Encoder and the Player is out?

Yes pal. It would be really amazing if we could encode WM9 from VirtualDub or Adobe Premiere. :)

alan_erickson@hotmail.com

8th January 2003, 03:46

I like the quality of the wmv codec. Unfortunately microsoft doesn't want you to be able to encode it to anything else, as evidenced by the message I get when I try and import a wmv into VirtualDub. That message being:

"Not supported Microsoft owns US patent #6,041,345 on the ASF file format, preventing third party applications from gyrating data from ASF files ASF file format support was removed as of V 1.3d at the request of Microsoft and to avoid patent infringement claims, and as such VirtualDub no longer supports ASF Please do not ask for versions that do."

amirm may come in here spewing a lot of positive words, but the actions of microsoft speak quite differently.

Rash

8th January 2003, 04:10

Yup, I kinda knew that, unfortunately. :(

pcdvdguy

8th January 2003, 07:44

This question is kind of aimed at amirm...

In the WM9 product features section, Microsoft claims :
...
# Hardware-based Windows Media Video Acceleration
Experience improved performance throughout with the next generation of video cards that support DirectX® Video Acceleration (DxVA) technology. With these cards, the rendering of Windows Media Videobased content can be offloaded onto the video card processor, making video playback smoother and making video playback at higher resolutions possible.
...

Does any current (or near-future) video-card *actually* support WM9 acceleration? The reason I ask, is that no MPEG-4 codec (Divx, Microsoft, Xvid) currently uses DXVA-acceleration, even though that would be a great way to reduce CPU-usage. [On a different forum, someone from ATI explained that the (original) ATI Radeon did not support all the motion-compensation modes of MPEG-4. Does the Radeon9500/9700 support them?!?] Furthermore, neither Nvidia or ATI claim to accelerate MPEG-4 playback, only DVD/MPEG-2.

The other thing I noticed, is that the DirectX VA API specification has restricted profiles for H.261, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and H.263. There is no specific profile for MPEG-4, although the API-document implies MPEG-4's the iDCT/motion-comp operation are derived from H.263. (I'm not familiar with the details behind MPEG-4 and H.263, so please correct me if this is a false statement.)

amirm

14th January 2003, 07:55

There are currently no GPUs that accelerate WMV although our partners are working on it. A gating item was releasing WMV 9 that we just did. I will report when these solutions come to market.

Amir
Microsoft

amirm

14th January 2003, 08:00

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... if hell freezes over maybe ;) ...

This comment was made wrt to availability of VCM/VfW codec for WMV. I am pleased to report that it was a really cold day in hell on January 7th when we announced that we will indeed, be releasing such a component :). The tentative date is next month.

Another question was asked wrt to having to use our file format and audio format with WMV. We announced that you can now mix and match our components at will. With the above VCM, you can for example create AVIs with AC-3 audio streams (which addresses the other concern someone else had).

Amir
Microsoft

ChristianHJW

14th January 2003, 10:01

Originally posted by amirm This comment was made wrt to availability of VCM/VfW codec for WMV. I am pleased to report that it was a really cold day in hell on January 7th when we announced that we will indeed, be releasing such a component :). The tentative date is next month.

I am impressed ! Not more to say right now, but i have to admit i am really impressed by this decision from M$. Seems as if they were pretty successful in promoting their codec to hardware companies, so they can see things easier now with respect to software and how the codecs will be used. In any case, i appreciate that. Competition is the salt in the soup of Life :D ...

Another question was asked wrt to having to use our file format and audio format with WMV. We announced that you can now mix and match our components at will. With the above VCM, you can for example create AVIs with AC-3 audio streams (which addresses the other concern someone else had). Amir

Again, a very interesting decision. Does this mean M$ was paying the Dolby licensing fees for us ? It will be very interesting to see if these ACM codecs will be compatible with existing AC3-AVIs created by Nandub, VirtualdubMod or AVImux-Gui.

alan_erickson@hotmail.com

20th January 2003, 05:08

Amir, will Highmat support wmv8, or just 9?

midiguy

20th January 2003, 07:34

yesh lee zayin gadol meod :D :p

lyl797

20th January 2003, 18:33

WMV9 vs DivX 5.x

Video quality ---- Same to me, tiny difference is way beyond normal human eyes' recognition.

Internet Streaming Video
WMV9 --- You can do streaming Video with WMV9, and the play back thru internet is very smooth with WMP9,
you can put in several different bit-rate coding into one WMV file that will fit into
different connection speeds.

In another word, I can make a WMV which can be stored on CD, DVD; and the same file could be used
on internet streaming video broadcast.

Divx --- I still don't know how to make streaming Video out of Divx ?

Encoding
WMV9 --- User friendly native encoding program from Microsoft,

DivX --- Need 3rd party Encoding programs to smooth the operation.
and there are lots of them in the market, sometimes, it's really hard
to keep track of all the updates for them and not easy to decide which one
to use.

Player
WMV9 --- Comes with windows OS free, update thru Windows online update.
No need to keep track of the updates ...

Divx --- Need to download, install, update .......

MaTTeR

20th January 2003, 18:49

Why compare to DivX 5.x? IMHO if you really want to see how WMV9 compares to the best that MPEG4 has to offer then you must compare it to XviD.

No offense meant but stating that it's far superior than the results of DivX 5 isn't really saying much for WMV9 IMO. If the same were said about XviD then I might be bothered to download the software and try it out myself;)

oddball

20th January 2003, 21:25

Plus you don't get to use all those nice filters in WMV9. I'd like to see how it handles anime interlacing and subtitles etc ;)

bond

20th January 2003, 21:33

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

Tommy Carrot

21st January 2003, 00:44

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

21st January 2003, 01:50

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

21st January 2003, 03:10

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

21st January 2003, 13:53

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

21st January 2003, 17:51

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

-h

The Belgain

21st January 2003, 17:55

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

21st January 2003, 23:01

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

22nd January 2003, 03:06

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

29th January 2003, 15:10

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