Windows Media 9 Series is released now

[Nic]

@amir:
Sorry for being an idiot, lol, but I looked for that setting in the SDK recently and must have completely missed it because I didn't see it. im mainly using the wmgenprofile example in the sdk to build the encoding setting profiles, its definitely not included in there.

Ill look for it properly soon, but if you remember or come across the function/parameter/constant let me know :) You may want to get the devs to add it to wmgenprofile as many will use that as a building block (oh, and get them to change from using a DWORD to hold the fps value, 29.97 & 23.976 are too common not to)

Im currently comparing WMV & Quicktime for a client, guess which ones coming out best in quality & then guess which one the client is going to use....

Cheers,
-Nic

[CruNcher]

@ amirm
to be fair i did another test and converted the mpeg2 stream to a huffyuv video and encoded it with XviD (VirtualDubMod) 1 pass quantizer of 2 with chroma me,qpel and b-frames activated came out @ 5,79 MB (6.078.464 bytes) (speed was much faster 10 fps encoding) ok so good picture quality is awesome then i used Wm9Encoder with extreme better quality slider full to the right

Input Clip
Colorspace: YUY2
Frames : 1500
Resolution: 576x240 16:9

Settings i used

Video encoding mode: CBR
Audience : 956 Kbps
Video Codec : Windows Media Video 9
Video bit rate : 947 Kbps
Video Size : Same as video input
Frame Rate : 25 Fps
Key Frame : 5
Image quality : 90

Filesize WMV9 image quality 90 : 5,81 MB (6.098.376 bytes)
Filesize WMV9 image quality 100: 5,95 MB (6.250.376 bytes)

The picture is from the 90 quality encode raising image quality to 100 made a bigger file but quality was the same

here is my result attached if i did something wrong in comparesion please tell me on the left side is the XviD frame on the right side the WMV9 frame

[amirm]

@CruNcher

I don't see the enclosures so I can't comment on the quality. But do have some questions on the encoding.

Did you use VBR for Xvid? If so, why did you select CBR for for WMV?

If you did use CBR, the quality setting is not the same as VBR mode. The quality setting simply tells the coded whether it should drop frames if it can not maintain the quality level or not.

Does the keyframe distance of 5 seconds match what you used for Xvid?

Amir
Microsoft

[Dali Lama]

@amirm

I would like to report a bug in the command line prompts for WME 9. If I use the command prompt to encode with a custom profile, the quality settings are all messed up.

If I put video quality vbr = 90 the size is bigger than at 75?

If I use quality of 10, the video is using 10Mb/s and using the pro codec?

I think the values are in reverse or something.

The Audio quality settings also seem weird. For instance, Quality = 90 produces 192 CBR 1-Pass?

These problems are not present in the encoding app.

Thanks for your help,

Dali

P.S. Is there some tech. info about what each quality setting is really doing. Like at quality will WME switch to Pro and what quantizer is each using or what range...does it use quantizers?

[ReTroAcTive]

doesnt seem to want to work with win98. something with the codecs. it doesnt even show any video codecs in your encoder and crashes if i try to start an encode. it only shows divx;-) audio and it can encode audio with it.
so i think your encoder will work, just not the wm9 codecs.

[CruNcher]

@amirm
i think this compare is valid the XviD 1-pass Quantizer 2 does only one pass and is exactly the same as 1-pass CBR @ a bitrate of 806kbps to reach that same filesize in WMV9 CBR i had to increase the bitrate to 947kbps in the WMV9encoder how comes that this differs ?
now i did also a VBR @ 806kbps came out @ 5,92 MB (6.218.376 bytes) as u said do you think you want the compared pic side by side posted so a 1-pass XviD CBR 806kbps against a WMV9 Bit Rate VBR which does 2-pass and doesn't reach the Quality of a 1 pass XviD CBR which filesize is even lower and the picture sharper as you can see above @ the same bitrate posted ?

Slowly i beginn to think strange about WMV9 amirm sorry

ok 3rd round started now on low bitrates 419kbps WMV9 wins the race
so as it looks like it was mainly optimized for Internet Broadcasting that could explain why it's not so good in high bitrates at all if it would be possible to turn off that PP filter it would be better to compare

[zambelli]

Originally posted by Jorgosch
A word or two about the security side of things:

Luckily, I have a firewall. Connection not allowed.
Then it wanted to connect to a different site. And another. Well, those are a lot of updates which are not included in the 9 MB download package... and somehow you forgot to tell us, Steve, that you secretly installed Digital Rights Management onto my computer. And left out an un-install routine (well, at least it created a rollback point).



This is completely misleading information. DRM support has been a part of WMP ever since version 7. And notice that DRM was always supported, never forced in any shape or form. If you want to use it, you can. If you don't want to copy protect your music, you can easily disable it. Why does everyone go berserk every time DRM is even mentioned? How come merely having the option of DRM is suddenly considered a disadvantage?

As for the connecting to external websites, WMP is merely trying to connect to windowsmedia.com in order to display its Media Guide, which happens to be the default pane upon first launch. If you don't want WMP connecting to the Internet at all, you can simply select File | Work Offline and your firewall will not be bothered again. Furthermore, as you noticed, WMP9 is full of customizable privacy options. There is nothing spyware about it. Everything that even closely resembles a privacy hazzard is disabled by default.

Everything that WMP9 needs to operate is included in the install package. No other updates are necessary and nothing is ever downloaded behind the user's back. The only thing that WMP9 ever attempts to download is metadata for your CDs and media files, and even that can be disabled (although it's no different than all the programs which use CDDB).

As for the uninstall procedure, notice that WMP9 for XP is a system update for WMP8, thus making it more difficult to implement a add/remove type of uninstall procedure. WMP9 for Win98 & Win2000 does actually have a typical uninstall procedure.

[The Belgain]

Right, slight problem to do with installing the Windows Media 9 Series Codec Install Package. I try to install it (on Win2k SP3), and it says install completed successfully, but the package still appears as uninstalled in windows update, and WM9 files don't play.

Also, when trying to play DivX files with wma audio, WMP comes up with a dialog asking me wether I want to install the necessary codecs and I slect OK. They get installed and the file plays fine (with audio). However when I next play the file it asks me to install them again.

Does anyone else have these problems and what are the solutions?

[zambelli]

The WMA audio codec that is commonly associated with encoded clips is actually a hacked MS codec, also known as DivX ;-) Audio. Because it is essentially a modified MS codec, WMP thinks that the correct WMA codec is missing and it attempts to download it. When it downloads it (probably the same WMA codec that is already on the system), it attempts to play the audio - and the audio does play. However, next time you play the file, the same thing happens again.

There are two solutions to this problem:
1) install the DivX audio codec on your machine
2) stop using DivX audio. Its quality sucks.

As for WM9 codecs, it's actually unnecessary to install them on any machine with WMP7 or WMP8 because those players will automatically download WM9 codecs whenever you attempt to play any WM9 encoded media files. However, if you are trying to play WM9 files with WMP6.4, it won't work because WMP6.4 doesn't support WM9 files.