Anyone have success with WMV HD encoding?
 

Any good setups? I will be viewing directly from my computer to 1080p TV (I use FX-1's)

Thanks
Mike

Canopus Procoder2 software will do the job for you. Very nice results. Better then strait from PPro 2.0 and better then the Microsoft Encoder application

Procoder is definitely more user-friendly than Windows Media Encoder, but I'm fairly sure that it's just basically wrapping a GUI around Microsoft's own command line encoder. So I doubt you'll get better quality results.

For the best WMV results, I would recommend downloading and installing Windows Media Player 11, which includes the new WMV command line encoder, along with something like Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition, which is a decent enough tool - even though bizarrely it doesn't support CineForm (I had to re-encode via Huffyuv to get it working with my files).

The new encoder includes all of the innovations of the Windows Media Encoder Advanced Profile, which is essentially compliant with VC-1, the advanced codec used to spectacular effect with HD DVD.

I have no idea whether Procoder can use the new encoder, but I doubt you'll be able to compress heavily using VC-1's innovations such as b-frames etc.

I always render to an avi (going wmv off the timeline is way too slow) and then use the free media encoder tool post process. It has more controls and features, and thus I get better quality than using squeeze (which has presets and access to only basic tweaks).

I have not had problems exporting directly from Premiere Pro using the Adobe Media Encoder.

Mike:

Not sure what interface you are going to your 1080p TV with, but I have FX1 and use Premiere Pro 2.0 encoder. If you are having issues, what is your set up computer to monitor HDMI, DVI, ?? Could be a video card issue. I really not tickled with my inexpensive 32 in LCD as far as using it as a second monitor through HDMI, as I get a much better picture encoding back to tape and playing it on monitor by componet output from the FX1.

Exporting an WMV-HD from Adobe Premiere 2.0 or from the WMV encoder is not a problem and gives good quality. The main difference which I can't get with either the original WMV encoder (believe me I tried many settings), and the PPro 2.0 is a good Variable Bit Rate with low CPU usage when playing the file afterwards. Through Procoder2.0 I can achive this while preserving the image quality. I get the same CPU usage from a PPro 2.0 file if I limit to 3.5Mbit CBR
It makes a huge difference in making a WMH-HD file which need to play nicly on many different computer configurations without dropping frames.
In my tasks preparing video files for video servers like the Maxedia which need to play multiple streams simultaineously without dropping frames I had to look further then just the standard exports from software tools.

Marc since you use ProCoder 2, what output settings are you using for this, I did a project this week and opted to do a WMV-720p output and the customer ran into issues. In this case I used the default 720P preset and added an audio normalizer and a video adaptive interlace filter, on my machine it ran perfectly but on my end users, it didn't. Should I have dropped the bitrate or something to make it more easy to play? Please let me know your suggested settings.

Miguel

Miguel: do you have any information about your end user's computer hardware configuration? That might help trouble-shoot the problem.

For WMV encoding at 720p I'd suggest a video bit rate of around 4000-5000 Kbps or so. If necessary you could try dropping it even lower, but that might start to compromise the quality noticeably. Going higher could potentially affect playback smoothness on some computers.

Just to add... We've run into overheating issues with some of our Dell and even our panasonic toughbook labtops. It seems these small drives cook up to failure after playing ten minutes or so of 720p 4K. Bringing down the bitrate helped some in so far as stutter, lockup, and overly long buffer issues.

My only fix was to have our folks copy and playback from their hard drives. Not a big deal for inhouse usage, but potential issue for outside clients.

Dell desktops, not sure the exact model but it's a monitor with a cpu that sits on the back of the lcd which is a smaller form factor and shows a P4 HT logo on it. I would have thought that being a hyper threaded machine it would have had enough but it didn't.

According to statistics on playback with WMP, the bitrate is set at 15k which from memory is the default in procoder. i am going to re-encode at 4 to 5k and see what happens.

thanks.

Hi Migue,

Here are my own WMV-HD 720 settings:
- Video Bitrate 6384Kbit/sec
- Constrained VBR
- 2-pass
- VBR quality 50
- Non-interleased
- Audio depends on needs.

I'm really surprised by this. Assuming you're referring to 720p video playing back at 4mbps, this should barely be stressing your hard disk at all. I've had 720p footage at 60fps playing back in the CineForm intermediate codec on my Dell XPS M1210 - this is massively more CPU-intensive than WMV and the bitrate streaming from the hard disk is at least eight times more extreme. Sure, the fans come on to cope with the CPU load but the machine acquits itself just fine. I've had the same successes on a Dell Inspiron 9400 (aka E1705) and XPS M1710.

Dell don't make desktop units that 'live' inside the LCD as far as I know, but they do make very small Optiplex systems that are effectively small form factor PCs that typically hook up to a 15" LCD. You see them all the time in banks etc.

I have run 15mbps VBR WMV 720p/30 content with no frame drops on a lowly Pentium M 1.4GHz notebook, so just about any modern P4 should outperform that. Conceivably, the problem could be whatever graphics hardware is in the target machines. It is almost certain that it would be a bargain basement integrated graphics chipset with little or perhaps no WMV acceleration, and if that's the case I'm not sure how any HD material would render on it.

Richard I checked with them after I posted and they are Optiplex units, after speaking to them in greater detail, I learned that by transferring the file from the CD Rom to the HD, the video played with minor stutters. Appears that attempting to play the file from the CD Rom didn't cut it.

for instance i am playing a bit with windows media encoder.
the most difficult is not to obtain a wmv hd file, but to stick to standard allowing burning the file to an HD-DVD (scenarist seems to be prompt to reject files that are not perfectly encoded).
Additionally, most of the setting of the media encoder are burried in the registry so the only way to fiddle with, is to edit the registry or find an utility to do that (i have found 2, but both are not running on my PC).
for instance i have found a solution for mpeg2 HD with procoder, and i wonder if HD-DVD will be most delivered into WMV (VC1) or Mpeg2-HD.
there is not a lot of player to test and i am still looking for burner to go cheaper.