Has anybody encoded .wmv and had success with it playing (i.e., without a hitch) on the Mac version of Windows Media Player? Here's what I'm having trouble with:

On my Powerbook I got audio only, no picture. I upgraded to the latest Player for Mac, and voila... I had picture. Until, about 30 seconds into it. Doesn't matter which of my trailer versions you open (I have three diff. file sizes up), everything freezes. I tried changing buffer settings around, but it didn't help.

On my desktop (PC), all the versions play beautifully. But owing to the nature of the documentary, I may well have famlies with old PC's or Macs trying to view it, in addition to (hopefully) those I'm trying to market it to. So I wanted both platforms to be able to watch.

I was going to throw up a Quicktime version, but I've had trouble getting one that was a small enough file size and didn't look horrible.

Suggestions?
Marcia

Have you tried RealVideo? How does that play? I don't have a Mac so I can't test it myself, but you might want to try it.

And I'm with you on the QuickTime file size. I have experienced the same thing. A QuickTime file is about four times the size of a similar bit rate Windows Media or RealVideo file.

the quicktime 'net codecs are all inferior to wmp9, but it shouldn't be by anywhere near a factor of 4... the problem with qt codecs like sorenson is that you have to pay $$$ for the software to be able to encode their best quality... but you can get wmp9 for free from microsoft.

the bottom line here is that pc operating systems make up around 96% of the desktop computers on the 'net, so worrying about macs on the 'net isn't worth the effort, unless your target market is, say, college students, or a group of people using more macs than average.

when encoding web video on a mac, be careful of the gamma settings, because macs use different gamma than pcs do... and it gets a lot more complicated with all the lcd vs crt monitors on the market now.

Dan, I'd be careful about the 96% of net users stat are PCs. First, if you encode a file requiring WMP9, you won't be even hitting all PC users as this is a really recent version. Second, if you compare home user percentages of Mac vs. PC instead of all (which includes businesses), the percentage of home Mac users is somewhere around 15%-25% of people on the net (depending on what study you look at) as there is a huge percentage more of Mac users on the net at home than PC users. Third, if your target audience is very media savvy and in a related field the percentage of Mac users goes up even higher.

So to say that a group isn't worth the effort can be a dangerous assumption to make. Who is your target audience?

I don't use the encoder you are talking about, but you might try making the file more backward compatible and you will have more luck on the Mac side. Windows Media Player on the Mac really doesn't get much attention from Microsoft as it is a free piece of software, so you might be better off tweaking a QT file. Try adjusting the key frame rate and see if that help keep your file size down with decent quality.

it shouldn't be by anywhere near a factor of 4

My mistake. The problem is the data rate adjustment in Premiere Pro seems wildly inaccurate when encoding to QuickTime, so I was doing it by trial and error, encoding a file, then opening it in QuickTime to check the data rate. I wasn't paying attention that QuickTime was reporting the data rate in Kilobytes per second, not Kilobits per second. There's quite a difference, as I discovered once I researched the matter.

I'll have to do some more testing now.

When looking to put web video clips on our site, I too came across the problem.... WM9 vs QT...

Well a quick look at the connection stats on our website showed that only 2% of the people viewing it did so on a Mac...

I was Mac based for 15 years and still prefer them... but you have to go with the evidence... it's a PC world. So I got a PC.

The biggest hassle I had was getting the videos to stream.. QT done on a PC just wouldn't have it, yet the same file streamed fine off a Mac... Same the other way round Mac generated WMV files just downloaded before starting to play..

Finally the other issue seemed to be file size. QT from a PC produced much larger files than the same film compressed in WMV....

For 2% viewing Mac was unfortunately dropped.

All my vids were compressed with PremPro as WM9 and even play on my dad's Windows 98 PC.

Regards

Gareth

Still longing for a G5

Gareth,

Get the G5 :)

Any way, I use Macs exclusively and produce material for users who mostly use pc's. I'd be interested to see if anyone posting to this subject using a pc has trouble viewing the videos at indecisionthemovie.com.

They are all QT files produced on an FCP/Mac edit station for a client that has no Macs. I've found QT to be the most cross platform compliant media player thus far.

Hi Dave

I agree.... I'm a Macintosh man... and if I worked alone I'd be on a G5...

Unfortunately there are other compatibility issues witrhother than video.. articles in word, graphs in XL etc... now the Mac handles everything no problem... but try outputting an XL graph or word doc for a PC and emailing it... 9 times out of ten the pc can't open it..

So here I am on a PC... and let's face it XP has ripped so much from Mac that Mac users aren't lost on modern Pc's any more... And Premiere Pro is a cool editing software....

Oh! by the way..... the quality of your clips was excellent on my PEE CEE played perfectly and looked better than my WMV files. Loved the Hammond organ.... LOL

But I always knew you were right but it's still a PC world .mediocrity rools....

LOL

Cheers

Gareth

mark, this subject was discussed out here months ago, and we posted all the relevant stats info... you need to do a search, and update yourself on the state of the internet in 2004.

i realize that the reality of overall mac o.s. penetration on the 'net is a bitter pill to swallow for mac fanatics, but the present situation is a direct result of steve jobs stopping the licensing of the mac o.s... the incredibly successful microsoft business model was right there in front of him, but he chose a different path.

i personally like the way qt functions from a web video standpoint, but it is rather invasive at the user level... when you install qt on a pc, it automatically executes "qttask.exe" every time you start up the computer.

you can get rid of that function with spybot, but every time you use qt, it'll re-install that program to execute at every bootup.

To answer Marcia's question, forget the .wmv files and use QT which is easy to encode in a format that's cross platform.

To do so, either open your FCP movie in FCP or QT Pro and choose File Export. Choose Movie to QuickTime Movie in the Export dropdown and DSL/Cable - Medium in the Use dropdaown.

Next select Options and under video click the Settings button to open the Compression Settings. Choose MPEG-4 Video (this does NOT create an MPEG-4 file), Quality-Best, frames per sec 15, keyframe every 150 frames, Limit data rate to 50 KBytes/sec. Click OK and then under Size set it at 320x240 for 4:3 or 428x240 for 16:9. Audio settings can be set low if you desire. Click Prepare for Internet Streaming and choose Fast Start-Compressed header.

This works for me and my windows friends as well.

Thanks all for the responses. Interesting reading. But all this .wmv and .mov stuff brings up another question... where do you get the little miniature icons people use on their web sites to link to their files (like my trailer)? The only things I've found on the Apple and Microsoft sites are the larger ones that you're required to link directly back to their software download pages.

Pretty amazing when you start reading what Apple and Microsoft have up for "use" requirements. For example, I had just typed (under my "Download" button) .wmv or .mov But it turns out that Microsoft specifically forbids "simply referencing the file's three-letter extension," and says you must refer to it as "a Windows Media-formatted file." Gee, that's not wordy or anything.

So that brings me back to tracking down the little icons to click in place of their long winded mandate.

Anybody?

Marcia

P.S. Dave, really like both your web page and trailer. No problems on my PC either.

are you referring to some sort of license agreement? i don't recall seeing that before.

what dave has failed to mention is that windows pc's do NOT come with quicktime installed on 'em... but all windows pc's do come with windows media player installed.

so every single person who wants to see the qt files on dave's website will have to download qt first... unless your content is really compelling, a lot of people will leave before having to go thru that hassle.

dave is looking at what's easy to encode for mac users, but that is a poor choice of priorities... the only thing that matters is what it will take to get your message across to as many people as you can.

you might want to consider putting both formats out there, but don't ignore windows media.

Many windows pc's do come with QT installed. It's not acurate to say that none do. Many people install QT when installing other windows apps as those apps rely on QT to opperate and is included in the installation.

I use both Macs and Windoze machines but vastly prefer my Macs. As soon as I buy Logic I will retire the P.O.S. PC's. Originally purchased to run Maya, Authorware and Cakewalk Pro Audio, but now I have Maya for Mac, switched to iShell (because of Macromedia's stupid licensing requirements) for OSX and am switching to Logic because of stability problems with Windoze (but don't know if I need Express or Pro). (all of my video work is done on the Mac with FCP and yes I have tried tons of PC programs as well)
I hate WMP because it is so unstable, meaning, not only does it not work very well on the Mac but I even have problems with it on different PC's. As a professional who at times needs to look at Demo Reels and samples on the web, if there isn't a QuickTime version, I'm gone to the next one.

Just keep that in mind. Who's your audience? Sure you might have 96% of your viewers on Windoze machines but if the other 4% are people in creative fields (ie: distributors, studios, talent scouts and so on) and they don't want to hassle with another half-ass working WMP, you just wasted your time.
So if all you want to do is make the masses have an easier time by using WMP, then you're on the right track. If you are making this available on the web to help with funding or promotions, you might want to look at it a little closer.

Looking at the install base of a platform or of visitors to a site is flawed. If you were honest and acted based on install base, you would have to use Flash because it's on as close to 100% of computers on the web as you can get.

Just because a visitor to a site is running Windows doesn't mean they don't have Real or Quicktime. You have to look at the installed format of your visitors which you can't. Inferring the format based on platform is erroneous.

What you can look at is data on how many player downloads there are and what formats are actually streamed on the web (i.e. what formats are actually used).

Last numbers I saw where in June that showed QuickTime and WM at about 38% of the streamed media market (i.e. streamed content on the web) with Real being the rest. WMV9 was some portion of the WM number and as others mentioned a poor performer on some Windows machines as well as Macs. There's more streamed QuickTime than WMV9.

From what I know of player installs, there's more QuickTime for Window players out there than there are Macintosh computers. But of all the formats, Flash is probably the most pervasively installed player on the web.

We produce 40 minutes of web video a week. When we used a standard web server, we used Flash. Now that we have a streaming server, we use MPEG4 because it delivers the most reliable and uniform performance without regard to a visitors choice of platform. This becomes even more important for streaming to wireless devices where format is dictated by the ISO standard (which is MPEG4).

The Sorenson Squeeze tools are very good at making great looking MPEG, QuickTime, Flash, and others. There are inexpensive versions for specific formats that are worth every dollar so if you want to kick it up a knotch, get Sorenson Squeeze.

Dan, my point is simply there are lies, damn lies and statistics. If your personal site gets only 2% hits from Macs, it sounds like a great decision on your part. But to say that your experience represents the world is a bit silly. Personally, I don't care one way or the other, but anyone should check their own user base and ignore statistics from different groups. They all have their own agenda and goals and can twist numbers to look one way or the other. If she believes a good portion of her vistors will be using Macs then it really doesn't matter if 2% of the world is Mac does it?

I am a web usability designer and I cannot tell you how ridiculous companies (or politicians for that matter!) react to one stat or another they see written in one journal or another... Get to know YOUR users and make decisions based on that (which it sounds like you did).

flash does not come from microsoft, and qt does not come from microsoft, so they have to be installed seperately, after the fact... they are not part of a windows o.s. install, but yes, maybe your vendor installed 'em before delivery.

personal preferences about what platform is best to edit on are not relevant to the state of the internet... and you have to put your product out there in the format people can access the easiest.

last month people downloaded nearly 100gb of video from my sites in about 3 weeks... i can't use codecs like sorenson or flash, because they have inferior picture quality that will require more bandwidth, which will cost me more $$$.

did any of you read that recent ben waggoner article on 'net codecs in dv mag? at the end, they presented him with various scenarios, and asked what he'd use... he didn't recommend qt for anything: http://www.dv.com/print_me.jhtml?articleId=49900167

as an aside, have you seen the new nero digital h.264 mpeg4? it just came out a couple of days ago, and the quality is amazing!

mark, the stats i quote are for the entire internet... and due to the volume of traffic i get, my site directly reflects that... it has for several years now, as i pointed out here months ago.

as a website useability designer, you should know those stats by heart! how can you make recommendations without knowing what computing platforms the 'net is based on?

if your numbers are different, please share 'em with us.

Dan, being a web usability designer you don't assume, you test and figure out what each particular situation demands. One size rarely fits all.

I gave examples before of things to consider and obviously Marcia believes that enough Mac users will be visiting her site for her to spend a lot of time trying to get things to work on them. You made a decision based on your reality, she'll base her decision on the facts of her case.

That said, adoption of standards like MPEG4 with codecs like H.264 will be welcomed by all I think... imagine, not worrying about WMV, MOV, AVI, DivX, etc... wouldn't that be nice?

The web is based on standards. They are its backbone. Platform means nothing. Making it mean something like by producing content that only runs on IE, pollutes the net.

You can't go too far on the net before hitting flash and installing it. Ergo, it gets installed long before folks hit your site with video. Doesn't everyone fire up their brand new computer and have to install Flash right then and there? :-)

Similar with QuickTime. With over a third of the video on the net in QT, the first time you find some video on the web in QT format, the player gets installed.

I think video people are too wrapped up in the video end of the technology and not in touch with the consumer end. They place too much weight on miniscule video image issues that, for the net, are wasted on the average viewer. Average viewers are happy to have the video play (i.e. you click it and it works). QuickTime and Flash each play on more computers than WMV9. And, in my experience provide a better experience for more people because they do a better job cross platform as does Real for that matter.

You can't argue that preferences of the producer aren't relevant and then argue that you chose a format and tools that saves you $$$. You as the producer are using your preferences to decide what format people will have to consume or go elsewhere. Choosing WMV9 means plenty of people are going elsewhere. MPEG4 is the ISO standard for the web. It plays in QT and Real Players. WMP does not support the MPEG4 standard. The WMV format is nonstandard.

I've done plenty of looking and evaluating on my own. There's lousy looking WMV vs QuickTime and vice versa.

I haven't seen the Nero H.264. Thanks, I'm going to research it. I did however, read that the QuickTime H.264 in the next release of OS X is superior to WMV9.

i agree that flash is certainly easier to install, and alot more common than qt... but i don't understand why you mac people can't admit that 96% of the computers on the internet don't have to install the windows media player.

people with dial-up modems still make up over half of the 'net users, so the qt player doesn't just "gets installed"... it's a farking big download that takes quite awhile on a dial-up modem, so it won't get installed unless the content is really compelling... wmp is already installed on all internet computers, which is why it's the dominant internet standard.

here is some more info on the nero h.264: http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?forumid=54

Mac != MPEG4, Windows != WM9... there are more things to consider than just OS when choosing how to encode your video. To say that 96% of users are some variant of windows and that they all have a WMP that can handle the a WM9 file are completely differnt things.

At any rate, Marcia, I think as long as you try to follow the intent of all that legal garbage... i.e. give credit to the name of the media encoder and the company that provides it, you should be fine. I would visit some major corporate sites and see how they do it and go from there... you could always just do a screen capture of your desktop icon and shrink it down to avoid accepting their agreement to make it a bit more lenient I suppose too.

"but i don't understand why you mac people can't admit that 96% of the computers on the internet don't have to install the windows media player."

The objection to your statement is because it belies hilariously faulty logic. The statement cites a guess by analysts on market share and presents it as a statement of computers on the internet which is untrue. Market share is not an indicator of internet use. Someone else on this thread cited 25% of computers "on the net" are Macs.

You exacerbate the problem with additional faulty logic implying that because a computer is Windows and has the Media Player preloaded, that WMP is "the dominant internet standard". This is also wrong. Just because a PC has WMP, doesn't mean it is the dominant standard. Furthermore, neither does it mean it will play any WMV file. That is the absurdity of your line of argument.

WMV has been revised 5 times in as many years and there's a plethora of CODECs that have been used and abandoned along the way. It's poor performance is why Windows computers are the biggest downloaders of alternative QuickTime and Real players. The internet is peppered with WMV content that won't play on plenty of Windows machine inspite of it being one of those 96% computers that didn't have to download WMP. And, using your own argument that "half the net" is still on modems, that means they won't have installed the 12MB latest WMP player either (FWIW, the QT player is only 11MB).

Present some intellectually honest analysis and it'll fly. Here's some to chew on based on the "25% of the computers on the net are Macs" statistic cited before:
Less than 75% are Windows
Some are Windows 95
Some are Windows 98
Some are Windows 2000
Some are Windows XP
Only XP has WMV 9
According to your statistic, half of all the others are on modem and won't have downloaded the "farking big" WMV 9 download.
To keep it simple, I'll leave out the European factor where MS now has to sell a version of Windows without the Media player as punishment. I wonder why?

You can't claim 96% of computers are Windows, claim WMV 9 is great and assert 96% of computers have WMV9 therefore web video should be WMV9. Bad logic.

It's good you are looking H.264. It's an official standard not one that's trying to become a defacto standard by a company twice convicted of illegally using its monopoly powers to squash free enterprise, heavily fined, and repeatedly hauled into court for illegal practices and stealing intellectual property. The fact that QuickTime is on a standards based strategy in supporting MPEG4 and H.264 early next year, puts it ahead of MSFT which is why analysts see Quicktime as winning out as MSFT falls farther behind with it's proprietary strong arm strategy.

BTW, you should start counting Smartphones, cars and connected PDAs as computers on the net. Less than 10% are running Windows CE or Windoes PE. The mobile device market is huge and will be playing content galore. And, by definition, it'll be standards based content.

You have a bad experience with MicroSoft, Ernest? ;-)

lol...

all the stats say the same thing:

2% mac o.s.: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/November/os.php

3% mac o.s.: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/zeitgeist-jun04.html

2.7% mac o.s.: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

etc.

what happened with microsoft in europe is irrelevant to what we are talking about here... nice try tho ;-)

You own M$ stock Dan?

Again, the point earlier is that in the US 15%-25% of HOME, internet users are on Macs. Businesses are more like 99% PCs, Universities 75%-90% PC, creative firms 50% PC. The point isn't that Macs are great, or that PCs are great, its that you need to know your audience.

MPEG4 isn't going anywher and neither is WM9. Both look to have a foothold in HD DVD/Blu Ray so I doubt you will see either being marginalized in the next couple of years. Down the road... who knows?

"You have a bad experience with MicroSoft, Ernest?"

Hasn't everyone who's used Windows? :-) But to answer the tongue in cheek question, I have used both Mac and PC (each) from their very beginning. PC at work (because I have to) when I'm paid. Mac everyplace else when I'm on my own time. I know both systems very well and base my opinions from the decades of constant use.

Dan,

After all this discussion, I went to your site. The 5 main video links on your site are Real Video.
lolrof....

You've not replied to the many points made in the rebuttals to your comments. You thereby concede them. As for the one thing you keep repeating, you ignore the data and analysis that shows your analysis and conclusions wrong. Why am I not surprised you don't see the relevance of MSFT being fined $630-odd million.

Here's the simple connection. You keep saying that because a system is a PC, it has WMP. The judgement against MSFT in europe required MSFT to sell a version of Windows without WMP thereby further bungling your analysis. But as I said, I left that out to simplify the math :-).

Here's an article quoting Gartner Research and Frost & Sullivan on why they think Apple has the right strategy with QuickTime and why MSFT with WMV does not.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/06/11/streaming/index.php?redirect=1087152097000

mark, you haven't shown any reason why the physical location of the computer is relevant to this thread.

and how can you be talking about iso mpeg4, when it has zero market penetration at this point? the only decent mpeg4 codec on the market was just released this week, by nero... and it's only on pc's!

ernest... maybe you should be taking lessons from mark on how to navigate websites, lol... you don't know any stats about my websites, but you are making all these claims about real media?

it's amazing how i am the only person in this thread to back up any of the media player numbers that people have listed here.

that 250 million download figure *from apple* was debunked a long time ago... right now there are over 600 million internet users world-wide, and since i just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that over 9 out of 10 of 'em are on pc's, that's well over 500 million wmp's.

Wow, Dan, you miss the point entirely. It is simply that for Marcia, the Mac market may make sense to pay attention to. She sure seems to think so. Her market doesn't seem to reflect the generic internet statistics... at least she doesn't think so. Who said anything about the physical location of a computer?

H.264 is NOT MPEG4. MPEG4 is an open ISO standard that has been around for well over a year now and is part of QT 6 and is supported by Real Player. Check out the new Peter Jackson film to see how he uses it: http://www.kongisking.net/index.shtml

H.264 is a new codec FOR MPEG4 that enables things like HD quality video to be delivered in the MPEG4 "wrapper".

I'm glad you have had lots of downloads, but seriously, you obviously don't know what you are talking about when it comes to MPEG4 or support for WM9 vs. Windows Media Player. We get it, there are tons more PCs out there than Macs. Duh.

Dan,

Yawn. Read my post again. I said the "5 main links on your site". I did not say "5 top links" as you erroneously imply. The 5 links in the left margin of your site are in Real format. I made no claim on your statistics cause I wouldn't know them. "Nice try."

Read my post again and read the article again. The stats I referred to in my prior postings were quoted from a Frost & Sullivan report not Apple. Here's the quote: "While Frost & Sullivan declined to comment directly on specific numbers, a recent report from the researcher shows Microsoft Windows Media at 38.2 percent; QuickTime with 36.8; and Real with 24.9 percent." Note these are not statistics on number of players installed which you are obsessed with.

Read this carefully. Sorenson has been shipping H.264 support on the Mac since August. Looks like Nero came out December 3. It's 33MB. If Quicktime's 11MB download is "farking big" and "won't be downloaded by "half the net's" modem users, what does that say about Nero? Is it "farking triple big or triple farking big?" Will it be downloaded by half the net's modem users? Will people download a triple farking big Nero instead of an update to their QuickTime player? Maybe they'll wait for MSFT to update WMP to support the H.264 standard. Oops MSFT doesn't do standards. 500 million WMPs and not one can play an MPEG4 or H.264 without a "farking big download". :-)

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Sloan : You own M$ stock Dan?
Again, the point earlier is that in the US 15%-25% of HOME, internet users are on Macs. Businesses are more like 99% PCs, Universities 75%-90% PC, creative firms 50% PC.-->>>

mark, you haven't shown any reason why the physical location of the computer is relevant to this thread.

what marcia DID say was "I was going to throw up a Quicktime version, but I've had trouble getting one that was a small enough file size and didn't look horrible." ...which is exactly what i've said all along about the lousy quality of qt video codecs.

hey ernest, how come she can't get decent video out of your qt h.264? how come you guys can't help her with that, lol?

"H.264 is a high compression digital video codec standard written by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the product of a collective effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). This standard is identical to ISO MPEG-4 part 10, also known as AVC, for Advanced Video Coding. " ...h.264 is indeed mpeg4, just as i stated earlier... geez!

one of the reasons why the qt h.264 mpeg4 has zero market penetration is because the qt player apparently doesn't work right on 96% of the desktop computers on the internet... i tried to look at your peter jackson clip, but i kept repeatedly getting this qt pop-up window telling me i had to install mpeg4, then reboot the computer because i was running active desktop... i've never had to reboot a computer because of a wmp codec update!

so we have crappy qt video quality, a dysfunctional qt player install procedure, and poor qt player market penetration... hence my recommendation to always use wmp9, lol.

fyi ernst, sorensen 3 is nothing more than a crappy tweaked version of h.264... the nero implementation of h.264 is far superior in picture quality to anything that sorensen has ever done, and the nero encoder costs a lot less $$$, doesn't it??... that killer nero h.264 will soon be playable in the vlc media player, which is a 6.7mb download.

Not really, as your quote points out:
"This standard is identical to ISO MPEG-4 part 10, also known as AVC, for Advanced Video Coding. "

Both AVC and H.264 are simply codecs and MPEG-4 is really just a wrapper with a set of standards for your video package: "This is important to note: the standard does not specify the encoding process." So the different ways of encoding the file to a compliant MPEG-4 file has nothing to do with the codecs used to compress the video data.

A decent write up FAQ: http://www.m4if.org/resources/mpeg4userfaq.php

MPEG-4 was designed with the default codec H.263, but H.264/AVC are new additions that were ratified as part of the specification in June or so. They are finishing the work on adding sampling structures known as YUV 4:2:2 and YUV 4:4:4 for better color, and 10 and 12 bit sampling. The codec H.264/AVC has been adopted as part of the HD DVD forum as I believe WM9 has as well (or WM9 might be Blu-Ray).

As for Marcia, if she is using QT Pro to encode her MPEG-4 file then she isn't using H.264/AVC, she is using H.263 essentially, and the encoder that comes with QT is not very good, which is really sad because you have to pay for it!! QT with H.264/AVC debuts with Mac OS 10.4... but I don't know if Apple will be providing it as a separate download or not.

As for a Codec's marketshare? Again, I don't think you understand what you are saying... a lot of content is encoded in MPEG-4, not tons as of yet, but it is fairly new. What you should care about is what marketshare can PLAY your MPEG-4 video... and with Real Player and QT you have a huge installed base. WM9 has what installed base that can play it? It isn't all windows users just like not all QT users or Real Player users can play MPEG-4. In both cases, WM9 and MPEG4, you have to have a fairly RECENT player in order to play them.

As you pointed out, VLC is only 6.7 MB and can support MPEG-4, so why doesn't MS support an open standard? That seems silly to me.

mark, i just proved that h.264 is iso mpeg4, despite your earlier denial of that fact.

>>>the encoder that comes with QT is not very good<<<

lol... how many times have we heard that already?

>>>What you should care about is what marketshare can PLAY your MPEG-4 video<<<

what you should care about is what market share can play any qt files, period!

wmp9 should always be the main choice for 'net video, because it has the best picture quality and the biggest market share.

are you aware that the chinese just bought out the pc division of ibm? you won't see any macs in china, but you will see 200 million more pc's located in china, all on the 'net within the next few years... probably all of 'em running hacked windows o.s.'s.

that european lawsuit against microsoft is further proof that microsoft has taken over the 'net video market... just like they did with internet browsers and desktop computers.

resistance is futile, you will be assimilated :-)

Dan, H.264/AVC is NOT MPEG-4, it is simply supported by the spec as of June this year. H.264/AVC support by things like HD-DVD players does not guarantee MPEG-4 ISO level 0, 1 or 2 playback, although most will probably support it as it is trivial to support at that point because it is simply a wrapper. It was based on the wrapper architecture of QT so they are similar in the way they are set up, but are completely different specs. H.264/AVC can be delivered in many different ways, one of the choices is using MPEG-4.

From internet news:
"A recent report on media player market share sales for client and enterprise applications by research firm Frost & Sullivan showed Apple moving into second position with 36.8 percent of the market, after running a distant third a few years ago. That puts Apple above Real, which controls 24.9 percent and not too far off from Microsoft and its share of 38.2 percent."
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3366831

Which is exactly why stats are not the only thing you should go by. Obviously more than 38.2% of users have WMP, but not WMP9. That piece of software has only been around for what 2 years?

"what you should care about is what market share can play any qt files, period!"
And so with any file format you need to worry not just about the file type you use, but also the codec. Encoding something in WMP9 only in theory hits 60% of the windows base using XP, although they did make a version for 98 SE, ME, and 2000 that users could update to. So what raw percentage of users can view WMP9 files without updating? It is the same as thinking that any QT player can play any QT file... it simply isn't true. You want better compatability, go with Sorenson codec. Want better file size and quality, go with Sorensen3 codec but leave out all QT users before 4.x... you have more to take into consideration than OS numbers.

China... it is a really interesting marketplace (it was a Chineese company, not the country of China that bought out IBMs PC division). The infrastructure is so weird that now they are building a middle class they skipped land lines altogether! They are also similar to Korea and Japan in that the middle class proves how well off it is by buying more expensive status symbols like BMWs instead of just cars. What does that mean? Well, no one knows yet, but if the trend with iPods is an indication then Apple as an overall company will do well. Maybe more like 6-8% as in Japan than the 2% overall share in the US.

As for QT... Some facts: Apple has iTunes and QT pre-installed by China's #2 manufacturer (Founder) of PC computers, so QT already has a good chunk of installed base in the country. MPEG-4 and QT are both cheap standards targeted at infrastructure such as cellphones and high-bandwidth deals for delivering content. iTunes is a great Trojan Horse for getting QT onto computers and ensuring greater marketplace.

For China the biggest thing will be delivery of content on cell-phones and who pushes into that market the most. If Apple works out a deal over there for iTMS sales then you'll see even more.

As you pointed out, there are already tons of PCs there (many running Linux) and so they have WMP of some sort there. But a lot of the base is pre-XP still as their machines are generally slower... but look for that to change dramatically every day.

QT and WMP aren't going anywhere. They will both be here for a long time, and have substantial installed bases. Real Player is the one that I could see dying off.

Marcia had two problems.

1) The WMV she produced played poorly on some of her customer's computers.
2) She couldn't produce QT files she liked at a size she liked.

I and some others suggested she use different tools (Sorenson Squeeze or Flash) to produce better quality QT or Flash. While no specifics were given by Marcia, that probably would do the trick. I use them to produce nice looking QuickTime and Flash all the time..

Your postings and proposal to use WMV 9 as the "main choice for the net" did nothing to help either problem.

I understand your frustration. It seems people don't agree with your opinions, believe what you say or take your advice. The emotional rants, blind MSFT bias, circular arguments, strawman tactics and general lack of reasoning probably don't help.

Maybe she is taking his advice. I think she got wise that this thread had little to do with her actual question anymore and ran for the hills! Sorry Marcia! I hope you answer was questioned somewhere along the way. (and yes, i do mean it that way ;-)

>>>H.264/AVC support by things like HD-DVD players does not guarantee MPEG-4 ISO level 0, 1 or 2 playback<<<

mark, i just proved that h.264 IS mpeg4, why are you confusing yourself with this player compatibility b.s.?

i don't blame her for bailing out, lol! who could stand to listen to these mac fanatics twisting the stats around?

the 'net user base stats i posted prove that 59% of the people browsing the 'net have winxp, and 15% have win2k... so we have at least 75% of the internet that is wmp9-capable.

that is far more wmp9 media players than all of the qt players combined together... you guys have not posted ANY stats that prove how many qt players there are on the internet!

poor ernest... you posted the eu lawsuit that proves microsoft's total dominance of internet video players, but your feeble attempt at logic backfired in your face, lol... so of course you are upset and embarrassed.

without an accurate count of total qt players on the 'net, there is little reason to recommend it for internet use... especially in light of the horrible video quality!

Dan, go look at the actual spec for MPEG-4 and learn what a spec is about. Support for a codec does not mean the codec is that spec. You don't know what you are talking about when it comes to this... so just stop. Seriously, its ridiculous.

If you want me to pull out the white paper and show you the diagrams of what the MPEG-4 spec actually specifies and what H.264/AVC actually specifies I can, but what you are trying to say is similar to saying that QT is Sorensen3... simply because it supports it. You can have MPEG-4 without H.264, so how are the two the same thing?

The MPEG-4 spec was updated to support H.264... that is all. There are 9 other parts including 2-d mesh objects that have nothing to do with AVC/H.264... Anyone can implement AVC/H.264 (with a license) but that doesn't make it MPEG-4. Hell, H.264 only exists because a bunch of people working on MPEG-4 AVC codec basically remade it freely as H.264. So while AVC and H.264 are identical (they were made by the same people) they are only codecs.

sorenson 3 is a proprietary codec(tweaked h.264, actually) that exists nowhere else.

h.264 is open standard iso mpeg-4, part 10, period... sorenson 3 is not a standard for anything.

i might be impressed, tho, if you could pull your "white paper" on sorenson 3 and show it to us.

and i'd be even more impressed if you could actually find some real stats on how many mac players there are on the 'net ;-)

From everything I have seen, Sorenson 3 has nothing to do with H.264. I think you meant the new Sorenson codec, 4, that is similar to H.264.

White paper for MPEG-4 can be found here: http://www.m4if.org/public/documents/vault/m4-out-20027.pdf
or some more detailed info:
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-4.htm

Sorenson is a codec, so I don't really know what their white paper would contain that is anything more than what their website advertises. Besides, they are a private company, I don't see them publishing the details of how they do what they do for free. :-)

H.264 is a copy of the ISO MPEG-4 part 10 called AVC, so they are the same thing, but have different names to show that one was published by the ISO and the other by ITUC. It can be used for anything. All making it MPEG-4 part 10 means is that you can say that you are MPEG-4 part 10 compliant so that people know what will play what. It also means that they have adopted AVC/H.264 as part of that specification, but AVC/H.264 can be licensed by anyone for anything, hence HD DVD is using AVC/H.264 for encoding HD quality video. But they are not trying to be MPEG-4 part 10 compliant so they are not constrained by the bit rate limits, the frame sizing, or whatever else.

To use a different example, to say you are Level 0 Simple Profile compatible you cannot have more than 15 frames per second. They even put a limit on the luminance.

More stats: http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/16921.html
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P471

Here is an example of H.264 without MPEG-4:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=54200808

MPEG-4 is more like quicktime and MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are more restricted in that they are pretty strictly defined. MPEG-4 is a wrapper with different levels/profiles that you can be compliant too, which helps make it easier to implement and support without constraining it. You can see how the "wrapper" or containers work with this image: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-429.gif

From a programming perspective it is great because they have abstracted the data into distinct objects that allows for specialization or generalization. The programmer gets to decide. It also has some great stuff for facial animations and other goodies....

As a whole, it is nice because unlike MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 it is only a wrapper so when better stuff comes along like H.264 and it can be adopted as a supported format, and new Profiles can be added to standardize its use. With each addition, there is also always backwards compatability.

most people don't know that sorenson 3 is strongly rumored to be nothing more than just hacked h.264, which is why i keep pointing it out :-) google it for yourself.

it's sorta similar to what happened with divx and the original microsoft-hacked mpeg-4 codec... it all started somewhere, then people just tweaked it so that they could legally sell it without paying royalties... that's why you won't find a "white paper" on sorensen 3.

by comparison, ask yourself what microsoft had to do to get the wmp format accepted as part of both hd dvd specs.

more h.264 info: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73022

you guys STILL haven't provided any evidence of the number of qt players on the internet today.

Sorenson 3 is missing a lot of features of AVC/H.264, so while it may have some similar structures and features... eh, who cares... Go with the codec you like. Sorenson 3 came out in 2001 though, and AVC/H.264 finished in 2003, so while it might have some similar features, it isn't AVC/H.264... and then, how you implement AVC/H.264 is going to determine the quality of it... how much processing is required... etc.

In the end, they are all pretty much trying to accomplish the same things and there are only so many different ways of compressing video with negligible loss of quality. No one, MPEG, MS, Apple, is doing anything that is technologically special really. No breakthroughs or anything.

MS wants the licensing for the next generation as much as anyone, they aren't stupid. And their X-Box isn't doing so hot, using a format that dies like Betamax would hurt them even more. I'd say MS has a lot at stake. What is interesting is that both groups will end up supporting both WMV9 AND AVC/H.264 and leave it up to the producers of content to choose. Kind of like which audio to use on a DVD...

Doom9 link was a rehash of everything from the sites I listed, so I guess we now agree that MPEG-4 != AVC/H.264? But that MPEG-4 part 10 provides support for it?

They can't track the numbers of players the same way as WMP9 player (you know the number of XP users appoximately, add more for downloads)... its an anonymous download for QT. So most of the stats are how many content providers are streaming QT, WMV, and Real... which is what I provided before... The stats for number of downloads of QT is over 250 million... add in that HP will be preloading it (or have they already started?) and that every iTunes download includes it, and you have a very large installed base. Is each of the 250 million downloads unique? No. But they do know that 90% of those downloads were for PCs. Do your best guessing from there.

Here is PC World with streaming stats from June:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116589,00.asp

Dan,

Bored would be a better description.

There is a gap between data and conclusion that is filled by something called analysis.

You repeatedly state your conclusion that people should produce WMV because Windows is the dominant OS and, in turn, there are more WMP players. If you follow this logic, the conclusion is to use Flash but you don't follow your own analysis.

To date, you have only been able to count WMP players based on OS and not on usage. That is why your analysis and conclusions are faulty and debated. Tracking players based on downloads is subject to double counting. AFAIK, there isn't an accurate way to count players. You have no solid data to argue a format based on the number of installs. Therefore, arguing format based on something you cannot quantify is has led to a poor conclusion.

Voices in this thread have presented more factual and reasoned approaches based on a broader basis and data from industry analysts. That discussion lead to the merits of standards because they render the platform neutral and create an open market with the broadest opportunity for all members of the ecosystem (producers, consumers, technology, players etc). It's open because all platforms have equal opportunity to participate.

Ironically, we are exchanging these posts because of standards. If the standards for discussion boards and email were controlled by single vendors then market fragmentation occurs and the market is constrained. This is comparable to the early days of networking where you had little fifedoms of Compuserv, AOL, MSN, and thousands of billboards each with their own phone number. The internet blew them wide open. Standards and competition, not abusive monopolies drive innovation. The road to your beloved Nero codec for H.264 was paved by MPEG4 and the implementors like QuickTime, Real and others to innovate beyond the prior standard H.263 and ultimately to H.264. H.264 and Nero are the very things threatened by a single vendor control of the format. As a producer, you should be infavor of standards not a single vendor.

The EU found MSFT guilty of abusing their monopoly powers to gain unfair advantage over competition. The US convicted them of the same. The $600 million EU was punishment not proof of dominance. The requirement that MSFT ship a version of Windows without WMP was an attempt to prevent the defacto domination of WMP. WMV still only has 38% market share and Nero, QuickTime and Real are still alive so....

In your December 8th post your analysis concluded "what happened with microsoft in europe is irrelevant".

In your December 12th post your analysis concluded "the eu lawsuit proves microsoft's total dominance of internet video players".

Which is it?

My mention of the EU lawsuit was a backhand remark while showing flaws in your counting and I also used it to make the point about the value of standards vs single vendor controlled. I made no claim of relevance to domination as you erroneously imply and conclude after you reversed yourself.

Yawn.

As a vendor do really care if it is an open standard or not? In the end, all you really care about is: do your users get your product and is it quality... right? Do you really care HOW it is done? Of course, you don't want a monopoly because then you end up paying too much and have no innovation, but as it is today, use what makes sense for you.

That's a good question. I think evaluating applicable standards are input to making the choice. I favor a broad approach that looks at reliability, availability, ecosystem (support for the format from other vendors) as well as the efficiency/cost of producing the format. In my opinion, availability and reliability of a format are important to determining if users can get the product. Standards favor availability, reliability and ecosystem across the widest audience.

I wouldn't pick a format that's available on a subset of computers and not made available by the format developer for years on others.

So, I think there's a point at which a producer should care about what standards are applicable to the task. Not at the DCT transform algorithm level but at the player availability, reliability, tools cost, quality... level. Right now, when I'm on a Mac, I cannot get to MSNBC Basketbrawl video as it dissallows access based on OS (not on installed format support). So in MSNBC's case, they've actually picked an OS (not a format) and conciously limit their audience. The video was easily available on ESPN in Flash.

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Sloan : Sorenson 3 came out in 2001 though, and AVC/H.264 finished in 2003, so while it might have some similar features, it isn't AVC/H.264 -->>>

i never claimed otherwise... and i never disputed your statements wrt h.264/avc being the codec, either... all i was referring to was the nomenclature, and the standards issue.

now ask yourself how many years were spent developing h.264/avc... hint: the original mpeg4 base standard was finalized in 1998.

"Work is ongoing on MPEG-4 part 10, 'Advanced Video Coding', This codec is being developed jointly with ITU-T, in the so-called Joint Video Team (JVT). The JVT unites the standard world's video coding experts in a single group. The work currently underway is based on earlier work in ITU-T on H.264 (formerly H.26L). H.264 and MPEG-4 part 10 will be the same. MPEG-4 AVC/H.26L4 is slated to be ready by the end of 2002." -march 2002, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-4.htm

<<<-- Originally posted by Ernest House : Dan,
You repeatedly state your conclusion that people should produce WMV because Windows is the dominant OS and, in turn, there are more WMP players. If you follow this logic, the conclusion is to use Flash but you don't follow your own analysis. -->>>

if you really knew anything at all about web video, you'd know that flash was designed for animation, not for video, which is why the quality is so bad... but then again, since you can't see the quality difference between qt and wmp9, your confusion wrt flash is understandable... a typical rookie mistake, that i am trying to prevent others out here from making.

and as i clearly pointed out, what happen to microsoft in the eu lawsuit is irrelevant to the wmp player stats, especially in light of the 200 million pc's coming online in china... that lawsuit totally backs up my stats wrt to the complete dominance of the microsoft o.s. and wmp.

poor ernest... "when i'm on a mac i cannot get to msnbc basketbrawl video" ...roflmao!! you asked for that problem when you foolishly chose to use a computer that only 2% of the people on the 'net use... when mac fanaticism interfers with logic and reason, this discussion is what we get.

you guys STILL have not provided any qt player stats... but you'll sit there telling people to use qt to promote their businesses on the 'net, even when you don't have the slightest idea what the target audience is capable of watching... you can't solve the microsoft monoply by whining about it, what you are getting paid to do is to help your customers get their message out there the best possible way they can.

I personally don't care one way or the other if someone uses WMV or QT or Real or DivX... my only point was to know your particular audience and do what makes sense. If you think you have enough Mac visitors to worry about, WMP files only probably isn't the best way to go.

I did give stats... 36.8% of video being served is QT, 38% WMV and less to Real. 250 million downloads of QT 6, 90% being Windows users. No stats on iTunes which comes with QuickTime, but that just adds to the equation. The point isn't rah, rah QT; but simply it has a large base and is a viable option. At home, I mostly use Macs so I do most of my encoding in QT. At work, I use XP so I use a variety of different things like QT to DivX to Flash to Windows Media, depending on the situation.

"i just proved that h.264 is iso mpeg4, despite your earlier denial of that fact." I'm going to assume now that you didn't mean to imply that H.264==MPEG4 but rather it simply is supported as part 10.

Let's also be clear, nothing was secret about AVC/H.264... it is all a pretty open discussion, that is why H.264 even exists... but the features of Sorenson 3 don't match up to AVC/H.264, so while they might have incorporated an idea or two (or the other way around, a lot of what is implemented these days are based on published research anyway) it is more like the original spec H.263 that was released in 1998 than AVC/H.264. Hell, WMV9 and AVC/H.264 have a ton in common... it will be execution of the codecs like Nero (who know's what the new QT looks like except beta testers) that are the real difference.

Dan, you seem like a MS fanatic. Ernest, you seem like an Apple fanatic. You two should go out drinking some time and just beat each other silly. Personally, I think they both suck. I like OS X because of my Unix programming days, but I hate the Dock and the step backwards in terms of usability of the OS overall... better stability, worse usability. Windows has a lot going for it, but again, trying to copy usability is worse than what Apple is doing... don't get me started on the Linux GUIs out there... or the 3rd Generation iPod design... or any number of things like instrument layout in cars...

But if you take this route "you asked for that problem when you foolishly chose to use a computer that only 2% of the people on the 'net use" be ready for when the next virus comes out for the MS platform too... evolution is kinder to diversity!

Dan,

You said:

"flash was designed for animation, not for video, which is why the quality is so bad".

Someone you reference frequently is Ben Waggoner. In a recent post on another site Ben said:

"Flash video isn't an inferior product, it's just quite different from the other video formats. It does have some technical weaknesses, but the advantage of tight rich media integration and a huge installed base of players can far outweigh those limitations."

You've called me a rookie but actually, I've been around since before Flash I first came upon "Flash" in the early 90's when it was FLC. I do know that the current Flash video capability was simply an addition to Flash's portfolio of rich content in version 6 a few years ago. What the industry analysts said at the time was that Macromedia correctly realized bandwidth and processing power would soon be at the point where video and vector based graphics (animation) were both practical and in demand in the web's evolution from sparse to rich media. Therefore, Flash needed to add video content. So, Macromedia quietly added it to the Flash player ahead of time to seed it into web browsers all under the nose of MSFT. MSFT was even preloading it until it all came out around the XP time frame. But it was too late. The Flash video player had already permeated the web. The rest as they say, is history.

It's now the most pervasive the player, easy to create and nicely integrates into the web. You say the codec is animation based but I seem to remember the Flash video codec is a Sorenson one which might be why Apple sued Sorenson for violating the exclusive contract between Sorenson and Apple. I've read others who say the Flash codec is an H.263 based one. You're the first to say it's animation based. Have any data on which you based that conclusion? Mind sharing it?

Ben's point is based on the same reasoning I've been making in this thread in counterpoint to you. It's also probably the reason why CNET, Amazon, and ESPN picked Flash, why CNN picked QT, etc. There are a broad base of factors in choosing a format and that a choice based on installed OS, as you assert, is a poor one.

MSNBC on the other hand has made a decision more akin to your way of thinking. Pick a format based on OS and purposly limit your audience by eliminating net users (including some Windows versions) from consuming your content. Yeah, make them go elsewhere. That's the ticket. Note the contrast with a decision to use Flash, QuickTime, Real where the content is available to and reliably delivered to all.

Mark correctly points out knowing your consumer is one of the factors and I agree. This thread began with Marcia's post lamenting a lousy experience with WMV and was seeking a way to produce WMV that played better or produce QT that looked better. The solution to the latter exists and was presented. The solution to the former has yet to come forth.

I, and others, think your recommendation of WMV9 because Windwos has a large install base is flawed reasoning. I recommend what I use: MPEG4 for streaming, MPEG1/2 for CDROM, and stitched Flash or 2-pass QT for progressive download and embedded rich media.

You recommend WMV9 but use Real on your website. Readers of this thread are not strangers to contradictions from you. The latest one was worth a chuckle so I'll end this post with a grin instead of a yawn. You said:

"the eu lawsuit is irrelevant to the wmp player stats"

and a mere 12 words later you say

"that lawsuit totally backs up my stats"

:-)

streaming stats are NOT player stats.

ernest, you didn't provide a solution for marcia, because there isn't any way to improve qt video quality, even when you spend big $$$ on sorenson... the quality still sucks compared to free wmp9! i guess that you just don't have enuf encoding experience to see the difference.

ben waggoner didn't pick qt for anything, lol, but you somehow think that you are smarter than ben because you are recommending qt to marcia?? sure sounds like mac platform bigotry to me.

flash did not have even have video capability until flash mx came out in 2002... like i said before, flash was originally designed for animation only... in 2002, they had to use the sorenson media video player inside of flash, because there was nothing in flash that could play a video codec... if you really had been around back then, ernest, you would have known that.

nowadays the flash video picture quality is no different than the typical qt junk, because of it's sorenson roots... but there is a new flash player in the works, and i'm sure that the streaming software that runs on the server side will continue to mature.

and yes, about 10% of the 'net video i serve up is realmedia clips... it's old footage from years ago, that people still watch... and it still has better picture quality than what you can get with qt today!

mark, i used to compute on a next machine... do you know what that is? unix-based g.u.i. o.s. that was around many years before apple FINALLY got their sh$t together with a unix o.s... i think that the next machine was a more elegant o.s. than anything apple has come up with, and i'd imagine that apple borrowed a few things from next along the way... so yes, there is nothing new under the sun.

and btw, "H.264 is a high compression digital video codec..." was exactly what i typed 18 posts ago... so i never really understood what you were arguing about, lol.

Dan, if you are trying to impress me with a NEXT box then you're barking up the wrong tree. (What does "I used to compute" mean?) Yeah, we had a bunch of NEXT boxes when I was studying Comp. Sci. and yes, I think that OS and GUI sucks too. The tools for building on NEXT were nice, but in the end, the overall experience was pretty similar to an SGI workstation at the time... not very usable (they were giving them away by my senior year). And come on... grayscale only? And the dumb ass dock is from NEXT, so no, I hate it. The windows task bar is an abomination too. From a usability standpoint Windows sucks even harder than OS X... although it seems the Mac OS is becoming more windows like everyday...

Steve Jobs has done a good job with Apple in terms of simplifying their model line up and concentrating on fewer, higher margin technologies, but just look at their OS, the metallic shit around iTunes, QT, etc... and you get the Fisher Price look/crap that you see in XP and the betas for Longhorn.

Neither of these companies knows what they are doing. Hell, when was the last time you installed a new piece of software from MS, Apple or otherwise and was 100% sure it would work? The source code leak at MS pointed out how many bugs they KEPT intentionally because too many people made their programs work based on the bug.

As I stated last time, with the quote from before, it looked like you were trying to say MPEG4 and H.264/AVC were the same thing. Which obviously, they aren't.