How can a WMV look good?

[Michael Dominic]

Is there any way to make a WMV look good?


We need to deliver it on the web at 320x240.

[David Jimerson]

What's "good"? I don't get the question. WMVs look fine.

[Michael Dominic]

Originally Posted by David Jimerson

What's "good"? I don't get the question. WMVs look fine.

No, honestly they look like crap most of the time. Blocky and compressed, next to a QuickTime file of the same size.

[David Jimerson]

Actually, I find the exact opposite to be true -- WMVs rock QT for filesize to quality. QTs got a lot better with H.264, but they're still not quite the same.

You're at a particular advantage when you're coding it to be 320x240, because you pack in quality at a low filesize, and they blow up to 200% (full size) very nicely.

In general, set your bitrate for 500K or more, the quality to about 80-82% and your "seconds per keyframe" to 3, and you'll get good results. If the filesize comes out smaller than you'd accept, up the quality.

What have you tried? And what software are you using?

[Dan Euritt]

david is right, if you can't make wmv look better than quicktime, you are doing something wrong.

it sounds like you are trying to encode wmv with a mac?? that is not a good combo at all, try downloading the free windows media encoder for the pc, and set it up to use two-pass encoding with the wmv 9 format.

if you are doing talking heads, you can try cutting the framerate in half during the encoding process... do not cut the frame rate during the edit itself... encoding web video at a low frame rate frees up a lot of bandwidth that will be added to the existing frames.

[Michael Dominic]

Yeah, I'm on a mac...

Where can I get the PC encoder? I'm on a PC at the office.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

david is right, if you can't make wmv look better than quicktime, you are doing something wrong.

it sounds like you are trying to encode wmv with a mac?? that is not a good combo at all, try downloading the free windows media encoder for the pc, and set it up to use two-pass encoding with the wmv 9 format.

if you are doing talking heads, you can try cutting the framerate in half during the encoding process... do not cut the frame rate during the edit itself... encoding web video at a low frame rate frees up a lot of bandwidth that will be added to the existing frames.

[Michael Dominic]

I'm on a mac... Every WMV that I've seen looks choppy. QT looks very smooth in comparison.

I use cleaner 6, but I'm going to try to encode on a PC tomorrow. It has to be compatible with PC and Mac as well.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by David Jimerson

Actually, I find the exact opposite to be true -- WMVs rock QT for filesize to quality. QTs got a lot better with H.264, but they're still not quite the same.

You're at a particular advantage when you're coding it to be 320x240, because you pack in quality at a low filesize, and they blow up to 200% (full size) very nicely.

In general, set your bitrate for 500K or more, the quality to about 80-82% and your "seconds per keyframe" to 3, and you'll get good results. If the filesize comes out smaller than you'd accept, up the quality.

What have you tried? And what software are you using?

[Dan Euritt]

cleaner 6 should do a good job if it has the wmv 9 codec, because it'll have 2-pass encoding capability... have you looked at the wmv presets in cleaner? it could be that the bitrate vs. framesize vs. framerate you have been encoding at is not right.

you can download the free windows media encoder for the pc from the microsoft website, but i can't remember the exact url.

[Peter Jefferson]

Another thing that might be a problem si your colour space..

try running a colour correction from Studio RGB to Computer RGB. this SHOULD fix any gamma nuances u may find

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

you can download the free windows media encoder for the pc from the microsoft website, but i can't remember the exact url.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...r/default.mspx

You want "Windows Media Encoder 9 Series."