Windows Media Video (WMV9) VCM in beta

[deXtoRious]

What bitrate are you using? Also are you using any deinterlace filter?

[Snollygoster]

Originally posted by deXtoRious
What bitrate are you using? Also are you using any deinterlace filter?


I can not remember the bitrate right now but I calculated it in order to give me 150 MB for 20 mins of video.

Yes I am using the latest Decomb for AviSynth v2.5.

I have to mention that I was getting 18fps average on the first pass and then it got down to 5-6fps for the second pass. Then I got bored and stopped the encoding before finishing but I checked the 5 min of video created and it looks WAY MUCH BETTER than any DivX 5.0 / XviD / RV9 / SBC combination. I am impressed.

The only thing I care about is that the DirectShow decoder is an MS one and does not feature any postprocessing options so brightness and contrast are not optimal (they are the same as DivX and so on but then I can use postprocessing on that).

This is why I am posting on the AviSynth usage forum about an AviSynth filter that might do that while encoding the movie.

PS: I have to note that the playback codec is not built-in in Windows Media Player 9 as I could play my AVI using any player (not like the annoying RV9).

Thanks.

[deXtoRious]

Please post your entire AviSynth script, because I'm having problems with WMV9 VCM as you can read above. Also what do you mean with "modified" Avisynth? Is it a public release?

[Snollygoster]

Originally posted by deXtoRious
Please post your entire AviSynth script, because I'm having problems with WMV9 VCM as you can read above. Also what do you mean with "modified" Avisynth? Is it a public release?

Modified release for the latest latest VirtualDub Mod.

Here is my script:


#Script Generated by SwiftAVS.

#PLUGINS:
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DivX\SwiftAVS\Plugins\MPEG2Dec3.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DivX\SwiftAVS\Plugins\Decomb_YV12.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DivX\SwiftAVS\Plugins\BlockBuster_YV12.dll")

#SOURCE:
Mpeg2Source("T:\TV\F.R.I.E.N.D.S\Series 03\322\vts_01.d2v", idct=2)

#IVTC, DEINTERLACE:
FieldDeinterlace(full=true)

#CROPPING:
crop(16,2,704,572)

#A:R RESIZE:
LanczosResize(496,400)

#BLOCKBUSTER:
BlockBuster(method="sharpen", block_size=8, detail_min=1, detail_max=10, strength=25)

[deXtoRious]

I have one more question: what is the blockbuster filter ment for?

[Jan Marijniszoon]

I've tested it last night with VirtualDub 1.5.1 (P4-release) on Win2K SP2 and it works perfectly.
Playback is good too with WMP 6.4. Muxing with ogg gives strange blocks though.

What bothers me is the smoothing.
I my opninion M$ stole that trick from RV9. Some sort of internal code that smooths/blurs more when the quantisizers rise up.

They should drop that. It's just like with DivX 3.11;
With the slider on 4 it looks horriably blurred. With the slider on null it looks very natural and sharp (even with blocky artifacts).

[wing1]

with the slider on null, you would gain speed. Quality and speed wise it is much better at 1 slide from null. Anything above that mark, I did not noticed much differences except a drastic drop in encoding speed by 1/2!

[sjchmura]

Blockbuster vs Anti-blocking/ringing in MPEG2DEC3??

iS THE BLOckbuster an AVI 2.5 plugin? Could not find it on the avbisynth.org page.

What about the block busting and deringing built into MPEG2dec3??? I have been using that for the 480 upconverts and it looks amazing. Defintley looks better then the low bit rate 1920x1080i I get from UPN with Enterprise.

I am using CPU=5 with strength of 25 and 45

[sjchmura]

Anyone notice that the offsets for AC3 (delay) are not quite right with VDUB mod?? For my HDTV streams I seem to have to substract about 25-50ms to get the sound and lips in sync

Anyone else notice a bit of an anti-red shift? The output with MPEG2DEC3 looks like it is lacking a little red compared to the original image

[trbarry]

Guys, I downloaded a WMV9 VCM which I do not think is beta (it doesn't mention that anywhere)

Where did you find that?

The link on page one of this thread looks like it still points to the same beta. But the Amirm has promised the production version will not be restricted to Win/Xp so it would be nice if that's here somewhere.

- Tom

[wing1]

@tom

What do you mean by restriction to win/xp? I am running win2k here and I don't have any problem with the s/w I've download from the link from the first page.

[trbarry]

Yeah, W2K works also, but the codec won't show up in Win/Me yet. Amir has stated that's only a temporary restriction and Win/Me will be supported once out of beta.

- Tom

[Jan Marijniszoon]

Originally posted by wing1
with the slider on null, you would gain speed. Quality and speed wise it is much better at 1 slide from null. Anything above that mark, I did not noticed much differences except a drastic drop in encoding speed by 1/2!

What are you talking about?
I was talking about the DivX 3.11 Playback DirectShow-filter.

The slider in the encoding options of WM9 doesn't affect the smoothing/blurring. I think it is inside of the encoder/decoder and that bothers me.

In the next version of RV9 this blurring-stuff maybe is going to be fixed. I hope they will fix it in WM9 too, otherwise I will never use it.

I just like it pure; with or without blocks and/or ringing.

[dattrax]

Hi,

I have discovered a bug with this codec which corrupts the image if the x & y sizes are not divisible by 16. My original test didn't have any resize which is why it work flawlessly, but I've just stumbled across this.

Jim

[Snollygoster]

@trbarry

my bad it was beta. i got the file from another site and the installation says nothing about beta.

[chris25frfr]

is it possible to mix a wma9 audio with a wmv9-avi (or in the futur?)

thinks.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by chris25frfr is it possible to mix a wma9 audio with a wmv9-avi (or in the futur?)

Bad idea, another bad hackery. WMV9 VCM works in matroskadub already ( great job Cyrius ) .... so if someone makes a WMA2MKA based on MPA2MKA you may have this combo available 1st May ( see my other release posting ).....

[thop]

how do i properly uninstall the WMV9 VCM?

[Sirber]

a little format c: ;)

[thop]

:eek: :eek: :eek:

I tried in the control panel, it removes WMV9 but it comes back next time i check. Also there doesn't seem to be anything that can be regsrv32 /u 'd :confused:

[thop]

bump :o

[feliz]

I have been able to encode dvd m2v to avi (wmv9) with ac3 beautifully using virtualdub (without sych problems). I think I like the resulting avi better than divx encoded. Next, I will try with DTS. I whish I could compare to RV9 avi with ac3, but no options thus far.

[trbarry]

I recently put up a test copy of Win/XP just so I could try this. Using vdubmod with the VCM codec I still could find no major advantage of WM9 over Xvid at high bit rates for HDTV type stuff.

In fact, Xvid seemed to usually have a tad better PSNR for the same files size. OTOH some other guys posted pics of doing similar encodings at a lower bit rate and WM9 did appear to have the advantages there.

So I'm still playing with it.

It's curious, and maybe OT, but my system appears to be able to properly play WM9 avi files I make myself but it generates all kind of strange macroblock ghosting artifacts if I play any of the wmv files downloaded from Microsoft.

Maybe a Radeon LE driver issue?

- Tom

[feliz]

With wm9 (>2000 kbs) I seem to have less ringing artifacts around objects than divx or xvid.

[Didée]

feliz:

And since no-one knows what WMV9 is actually doing to the stream between decoding and displaying, the absence of ringing means - nothing.
With activated de-ringing, every little bit of XviD's ringing is also gone away. But then indeed, WMV9 looks better ...
So, another conclusion could be that it is simply the post-processing that works better than XviD's - apart from the fact that M$ is not doing any PP, no, no-no, never, of course ... ;)

[CaptainCarrot]

So, another conclusion could be that it is simply the post-processing that works better than XviD's - apart from the fact that M$ is not doing any PP, no, no-no, never, of course ...

Well, if they do pp, they're damn good at it and do it with hardly any cpu-power, since playback of wm9 seems to need less cpu-power for playback than divx/xvid without any pp

[trbarry]

I haven't seen that either. I'd guess that at the same bit rate and resolution Xvid takes less CPU.

- Tom

[marnum]

On my notebook [Athlon XP 2000+; 512; XP SP1] WM9 takes less CPU than Xvid.
I compared an Xvid encode using B-frames (no qpel and no gmc because I used VHQ) to a WM9 encode. Resolution 720x288. Xvid needed 60% in average, with peaks at 75% - WM9 needed 40% in average, with peaks at 55%. I don't use a spec. tool for measuring this, only Task Manager and my eyes :cool:
Since I encode my vids for watching them on my notebook, CPU power needed for playback is quite important to me - long battery life ;). From now on WM9 is my first choice (as long as I can't get RV9 to play flawlessly)

EDIT: I switched it to 500 Mhz before testing this - don't you think it takes 60/40% CPU on a 2 Ghz machine! :sly:

[CaptainCarrot]

Just did some test with 720x556 anamorphic, and I agree that xvid/divx with fddshow takes a little bit less cpu-power to decompress than wm9. My mistake, I'm pretty much a newbie with xvid, i used mainly DivX so far, and the Divx-decoder needs about 2 times the cpu-power without any postprocessing. That made Divx pretty much unplayable on my 1,2GhzP3. It plays fine though with fddshow, but I always have the impression that there is some greenish fog over the whole movie that isn't there with the divx-decoder, that's why I usually don't use it to decompress DivX.

[trbarry]

Results seem to vary somewhat.

I've been playing with compressing a very clean but heavily filtered low motion HDTV clip. This is a 1280x720@24p clip compressed at only CBR 1.5 mbps, with no b-frames or special options.

I've been doing the same thing with both WM9 and Xvid, both into avi files with ac3 sound. Today I tried playing both versions over a network with an 866 mhz P3.

Both play fine but it seems to pretty take about 80-85% for Xvid and about 94% on the WM9 version.

I'm just using the Xvid decoder from a recent Koepi release, no ffdshow or other filters involved.

- Tom

[midiguy]

just tried it in "2-pass vbr peak" mode.
All I get was an error message "parse error." for the 1st and 2nd pass. mehhhh

*edit*
running:
win xp sp1
matrox g400 32 mb
Pentium 3 600 mhz
128 mb sd ram

[marnum]

I get the same error when using VirtualDub Job list. I think this is why it's still beta.
Simply save as Avi without "add to Job list" enabled and it will work. The drawback is that you can't do both passes overnight.

[midiguy]

haha, I was just going to post that it is the job list.. you beat me to it!

yeah, I did the passes individually and it worked. I must say, the result is very very good.

I did the triple x trailer @ 650 kbps (video only) at 528 x 288 and I am very pleased with the outcome. I'm gonna try it @ 640 x 352 and report back, same bitrate.

*edit*, oh, forgot to mention, I used "2-pass vbr peak" mode, with a max (peak) bitrate @ 1365 kbps (which is 650 * 2.1)

[midiguy]

wow
@ 640 x 352, the result was awesome... to be honest, I didn't think this codec would do so well..

does anyone know if this decoder uses any post-processing? (there is no configurable decoder dialogue).

[Sirber]

I do 640x480 at 350kbps. What's the big deal?

[Emp3r0r]

I tested the WMV9 yesterday after I found a few problems with my XviD encode. I used VBR 2pass and the file came out just slightly bigger than the XviD encode. The quality was OK but the XviD encode was much much more pleasing to the eye. The WMV9 encode looked almost 100% of the time as if it was compressed, while the XviD encode showed maybe 20% of the time that it was compressed. Bitrates were around 800kbps and the resolution was 640x352. There was a few scenes that looked terrible in both XviD and WMV9. The scene had low contrast and not much color and it was a pan N-NE. The XviD looked better here except there was visual smearing from the edge of the pan. I'm tring DivX5.04 now to see who wins. If only RV9 worked in VirtualDub I'd give it a go too.

PS: the movie was "The Ring", very freaky oh and the scene I'm talking about is about an hour into it

I used Divx5 decoder with usually little to none postprocessing and I like using that film grain effect at about 60%. Maybe this is why the XviD didn't show as many compression artifacts

[marnum]

At the moment I'm encoding Memento at 1600 kb/s in WM9 and in XviD lastest unstable. For those who don't know it, it's a 2h medium-action movie with many close-ups. Report following tomorrow ;)

LanczosResize 720x304
FluxSmooth(3,3)

XviD:
ChromaMotion
VHQ=1
MPEG Custom (Andreas 78er)
QuarterPel
B-Frames 3,126,100
I-quants: 2-3
P-quants: 2-4

WM9:
Encoding 2-Pass, Average Bitrate
Performance-slider one click from the left

I also am a fan of perfect quality and so I usually encode the Xvids for my Notebook-HDD aimed at 2 CDs, even 3 if that isn't enough. That's why I cut the Quantizers - exact filesize isn't essential for me.

EDIT: As we want fair comparisons I'll reencode WM9 if XviD exceeds filesize, right?

[Didée]

Originally posted by Sirber
I do 640x480 at 350kbps. What's the big deal?
You can also do 1024x768 @ 200 kbps ... will look just the same to you, until you have consulted an optician.

:tired:

[midiguy]

there is a problem with using 350 kbps @ 640 x 480. when using rv9, just because you don't see pixels or noise doesn't mean that it is compressed well. instead, you will see blur and jumpies (on walls and such)..

[marnum]

Finished! There are some differences

1. Walls smear with xvid (I'll disable quarterpel next time)
2. WM9 blurs more and has less detail (due to postprocessing I think)
3. WM9 shows a little smearing line of ca. 5 pixels beneath the upper border (I had fast recompress enabled, maybe that's it?)

Fps:
Xvid: ~9
WM9: ~17

My opinion: Xvid simply looks better and gives more detail. As long as you can't adjust PP in WM9 it doesn't really make sense to use it.
EDIT @ The others around here: don't feel offended, I'm a HQ-fan ;)

[Emp3r0r]

Divx 5.04 Settings
Home Theater Profile
no psychovisual enchancements
max key interval: 220
File Size : 753324KB

XviD Settings Using Build Dated - 4/5/2003 10:17:50 AM
Posted Here (http://jvance.com/files/XvidSettings2.html)
File Size : 785229KB

WMV9 beta
Two-pass Bit rate VBR mode
key frame interval: 8000ms
performance: 80
File Size : 801328KB

The only one I watched from beginning to end was the XviD encode and I thought the quality was great. The others had good quality too. In fact, I think they all have acceptable quality yet they all have room for improvement. I think WMV9 and XviD clearly retain more details, although they did have a few more bits to do it with. XviD is more pleasing to the eye than WMV9 even though WMV9 can sometimes retain more details (see face screenshot). DivX tends to block on fast motion (possibly because of less bits) compared to the others (see scary screenshot). WMV9 won the underwater battle (see hand screenshot) with the least blocks, yet DivX5 retained slightly more detail here. If you'd like to view the screenshots yourself, they are available from the link below.

The Screenshots
Photoshop and broadband users need only apply.
Download this 3.57MB zip file (http://jvance.com/files/files.zip) (9 screenshots total)
Top Layer : XviD
Mid Layer : WMV9
Bot Layer : DivX

ps: no source frames included

[Sirber]

In the ZIP there is only 3 files... and ACDSee only show 1 per file. Did I miss something?

[Atamido]

Photoshop files can have several layers, and it allows you to show, or not show each one. ACDSee probably does not allow you to choose which layer(s) to view. Just go out and purchase (http://www.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catPhotoshop) a copy of Photoshop 7.0, right now only $609.... oh wait, nevermind.

[thop]

please someone tell me how to uninstall the WMV9 ACM :)

[marnum]

Sirber said it before:

A little format c: :D

Seriously:
I've got XP german, so I'll have to translate the terms :rolleyes:

Go to "Hardware/Device Manager" in "System Configurations", select "Audio- Video- and Gamecontroller", open "Videocodecs" and there you are. Select "Windows Media 9 Beta" and remove it.

[Sirber]

I didn't know that they where there... Windows is so complicated :devil:

[thop]

marnum: i tried that, it doesn't work. next time you open the videocodecs screen it is back.

[marnum]

Ah, yes :angry:

Seems as if Sirber was right :(

[outlyer]

Originally posted by Pamel
Photoshop files can have several layers, and it allows you to show, or not show each one. ACDSee probably does not allow you to choose which layer(s) to view. Just go out and purchase a copy of Photoshop 7.0, right now only $609.... oh wait, nevermind.The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/win32/) can handle layers and photoshop files and it's free (and open source ;))

[Sirber]

Originally posted by outlyer
The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/win32/) can handle layers and photoshop files and it's free (and open source ;))

and for linux? I prefer the complicated Windows :D