Using Microsoft Media 9 compression from Virtualdub

[Tolwyn]

I'm frameserving from Vegas to Virtual Dub...
Using some filters, compressing audio (layer3) and using WMV or Media 9 compression on the video...

I assume this is *.wmv; however, my only save options are AVI.

Is using Media Player 9 compression as the output format supporting in Vdub (1.5.6)?

[jimmalenko]

No, vdub can only output to AVI AFAIK. Use Windows Movie Maker or Windows Media Encoder.

[Hyper Shinchan]

Or you can also use TMPGEnc Express (but why it encode also in WMV and WMA?).

[DarrellS]

No, vdub can only output to AVI AFAIK. Use Windows Movie Maker or Windows Media Encoder.

VirtualDub will compress to WMV9 but it will have an AVI extention.
To compress to WMV in VirtualDub, you need the Windows Media Video 9 VCM package which will let you watch WMV9 in 6.4 players and encode WMV9 with 3rd party encoders such as Virtualdub.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/codecs/vcm.aspx

[Tolwyn]

Well... I was frameserving, so I couldn't use Windows Encoder or MovieMaker.

Can you double frameserve? FrameServe from Vegas to VirtualDub and from VDub frameserve to... ? This didn't work for Windows Encoder.

I was successful with the AVI extension.

Why WMV?

Because I'm testing stuff! This is half the fun, finding what format does what best, etc.

I'm not a fan at ALL of WMV. I just had time to TINKER!

[DarrellS]

The problem with VirtualDub is although it will encode the WMV.AVI, it will not open them or any other ASF/WMV file since they are Microsoft files.

If you like playing with WMV files ( I sometimes do if I find good quality clips ), use TMPGEnc to convert them to AVI and then edit with VirtualDub. You can't open them with the TMPGEnc browser but you can drag the files into the preview window and it will open the WMV files.

[jimmalenko]

The problem with VirtualDub is although it will encode the WMV.AVI, it will not open them or any other ASF/WMV file since they are Microsoft files.

Virtualdub 1.3c will

[DarrellS]

Virtualdub 1.3c will

I've still got copies of 1.3c on back-up CDs but I don't have a need for it since there are a few programs that will handle ASF/WMV files nowadays and 1.3c won't handle any of the newer files.

I think I would've put up a bigger fight if I was Avery since his program is freeware and if they still told me I coundn't decompress their files then I definately wouldn't have allowed support for the output of Microsoft files.

[DarrellS]

Looks like the new version (1.6.5) will open the wmv.avi files

[rhegedus]

VirtualDub will compress to WMV9 but it will have an AVI extention.
To compress to WMV in VirtualDub, you need the Windows Media Video 9 VCM package which will let you watch WMV9 in 6.4 players and encode WMV9 with 3rd party encoders such as Virtualdub.

Only just found this out

I'll have a play around with it. I really like the simplicity of VDub, and it should mean that I don't have to wait while Movie Maker takes an hour to import my files.

Does anyone know how quick VDub 1.8 is at encoding wmv compared to Movie Maker?

[celtic_druid]

The VCM encoder has bframes disabled by default, since VfW/AVI can't properly handle them. That would I guess speed up encoding. Encoding engine is the same though, so other than that you should be looking at the same speed. Can't really see much point in using WMV in an avi container myself.

[Safesurfer]

If you use DebugMode's Wax 2.0 as a plugin to Vegas, you can use most 3rd party VDub filters (no internal or 2 pass filters) directly in Vegas. If you also install the DebugMode Frameserver, you could then frameserve to Windows Media Encoder, no need to use VDub at all.

[DarrellS]

The VCM encoder has bframes disabled by default, since VfW/AVI can't properly handle them. That would I guess speed up encoding. Encoding engine is the same though, so other than that you should be looking at the same speed. Can't really see much point in using WMV in an avi container myself.

From my experience, it takes twice as long to compress with XviD compared to Indeo 5 or Intel I262 and 3 times as long to compress to WMV than XviD so a file that takes an hour to compress to I262 would take 6 hours to compress to WMV. The only time that I might want to suffer through a WMV compression is if it's the only way to get a piece of video onto the internet because of their file size limits.
I have found a few WMV files that were high enough quality (I know that high quality sounds strange when addressing WMV files) to convert to XviD and save to a data disc. WMV won't play on my Philips.
Two things we won't be able to convince most people not to do is using Windows Movie Maker (or any other proprietory compression - Real or QT) and putting VBR audio in AVI files.

[celtic_druid]

QT is actually pretty open. The container is open and these days most trailers use AVC video and aac audio, both of which are open. Still mp4 as a container would be better. For older mov files libavcodec can handle Sorenson and QDM2.

On the WMV front, WMV9 = VC-1, so that is basically open now to.