Anyone tried WMV9 encoding with ffdshow?

[chilledoutuk]

I was getting bored so i thought I would start looking at other codecs to XVID so I installed the latest build of ffdshow. I then noticed that like ffmpeg it has vfw encoding ability so i thought lets play around a bit with this. I tried the H.264 implementation but was not overly impressed then I saw WMV9 so I thought I would give it a go.
considering that it only encodes one pass i was very impressed wih the quality. then i remembered how wmv9 is menat to be one of the best HDTV codecs around.
that was all the incentive I needed I then set about resizing matrix revolutions to 1280x528 using the latest version of lanczos, lanzos4 to get the sharpest picture possible.

I then encoded the entire film with the ffdshow WMV9 encoder at a constant quality of 85 the film finshed at aproximatly 2Gb at 15fps encoding speed.

I was very impressed with the quality and even more with the effciency of the wm9 at playback of such high resolution video sequences.

here is a sample (http://uk.f2.pg.briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/wmv91280/vwp2?.tok=bcOcAYTBPwkO2mrD&.dir=/&.dnm=matrix.avi&.src=bc )

The settings i used were:
one pass constant quality
quality = 85
seconds between keyframes = 10
complexity = 0
Crispness = 100

all that is needed now is a 2pass option

[chilledoutuk]

didnt realise that the windows media vcm worked in vdub doh..

hmm well i cant find any setting for chrispness so i will encode a couple of vids and see how they compare

[chilledoutuk]

ok dont rush too reply

[Sirber]

no members live on doom9 forums BTW, so don' expect fast answer to all your problems. Also, you *can't* encode with ffdshow: it's a decoder :p

[RadicalEd]

Originally posted by Sirber
Also, you *can't* encode with ffdshow: it's a decoder :p

Milan assimilated ffvfw into ffdshow :/

[bond]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
Milan assimilated ffvfw into ffdshow :/ yep, still i wonder why he now names the encoder ffdshow too
the encoder is known as ffvfw already and the encoder also doesnt have anything to do with directshow

i would understand it if he would offer a directshow encoder filter, but in vfw

[Tommy Carrot]

I cannot find the WMV9 encoding ability, only WMV 7 and 8 (which BTW i cannot play back :)). Do you have some special build or i'm blind?

[chilledoutuk]

ok get the latest build from here

anthos build (http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/)

Firstly i know that it's just ffvfw but I wanted to share my findings as i thought they were impresive i have been messing around with the ms wmv9 VCM (which so happens is slower than ffvfw when encoding) however more features are available.

no members live on doom9 forums BTW, so don' expect fast answer to all your problems.

1. i dont have a problem so how can you answer?
2. all i wanted was other peoples opinions on the wmv9 feature in ffvfw.
3. 50 people had viewed my thread without replying thats why i made the last post.

[Tommy Carrot]

Well, i have the latest build, but it has only WMV 7 and 8 encoding ability. No WMV9 here at all.

[chilledoutuk]

have you tried anthos's build?

[Tommy Carrot]

It's Athos, but yes. :)

[edit]: I've win98 system, and WMV9 doesn't like it too much, perhaps this is the reason why is it missing.

[anonimitous]

About:

Video for Windows and DirectShow codec based on VFW code from XviD project and
using libavcodec library from ffmpeg project for compression. Few other
compression libraries are supported too.

Features:

- various compression methods: MPEG 4 compatible (Xvid, DivX 4, DivX 5) using
libavcodec or XviD Divx 3 compatible, MSMPEG4v2, MSMPEG4v1 WMV1/7, WMV2/8 H263,
H263+ HuffYUV in YV12 colorspace MJPEG MPEG 1 Theora (not for regular use,
format isn't stabilized yet) MPEG 2 by using mpeg2enc code from MJPEGtools
project
all Windows Media Video 9 supported encoders with output to asf/wmv file or AVI
- all common encoding modes: constant bitrate, fixed quantizer, fixed
quality, two pass encoding (depends on compressor features)
- for libavcodec and XviD detailed selection of motion estimation method
- minimum and maximum I
frames interval - minimum and maximum quantizer selection, quantizer type and
trellis quantization selection for libavcodec - adaptive quantization (aka.
masking) for libavcodec and XviD, single coefficient elimination - selectable
compression of starting and ending credits - two curve compression algorithms
for second pass of two pass encoding - thanks to XviD developers - second pass
simulation: although not very precise, still helpful for tweaking advanced curve
compression parameters - ability to use libavcodec internal two pass code
- image preprocessing with ffdshow image filters (latest ffdshow version must be
installed) - graph during encoding: if your encoding program doesn't provide one
- B frames support: from one to eight consecutive B frames - support for MPEG 4
quarterpel and GMC - selectable interlaced encoding - decompression

Web links:

ffdshow: http://cutka.szm.sk/ffdshow or http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow
XviD: http://www.xvid.org
ffmpeg: http://ffmpeg.org
mplayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu
MJPEGtools: http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net

and
doom9: http://www.doom9.org

Copying

ffdshow is distributed under GPL. See copying.txt


Milan Cutka (cutka@szm.sk)

[chilledoutuk]

Hi milan how is the WMV9 encoder related to the microsoft vcm?
I am unsure which to use your wmv9 encoder or the wmv9 VCM. All i know is that yours is much faster what other differences.

TIA

[Neo Neko]

First of all there are ffdshow and ffvfw encoders/decoders. More or less just Directshow and vfw interfaces to libavcodec. But ffvfw is a bit more hacky than the directshow version.

Originally posted by chilledoutuk
Hi milan how is the WMV9 encoder related to the microsoft vcm?

All encoding and decoding parts are almost exclusively derived from the ffmpeg project. Milan works to code an interface for the library so it can be used in the Windows Media framework instead of a standalone exe. As such the WM encoding portions for WM 1, 2, and 3 [AKA 7, 8, and 9] is in no way based one the code for the actual Microsoft codecs. They are designed IIRC from observations about the codec bitstream and used technologies to provide a similar and compatable codec. Meaning it can decode official WMV streams and generate WMV streams that the official decoder can handle.

Originally posted by chilledoutuk
I am unsure which to use your wmv9 encoder or the wmv9 VCM. All i know is that yours is much faster what other differences.

TIA

To know for sure you will probably have to head over to mplayer hq and ask the ffmpeg devs. Unless any of them wander through. Preliminary tests shows it's quality is quite on par with Microsoft's own codec. But if you are concerned for compatability.......Well then you probably would not be using WMV in the first place. But the WMV VCM will be more compatable. It was not till these latest ffdshow compiles and ffmpeg compiles that actuall playable WMV9 content could be properly generated. Which means that in all likelyhood buugs may well yet exist.