How to Convert WMV8 and WMV9 to other formats the BEST way,

[duhmez]

WMV 8 and WMV 9 utilise variable framerate, which causes major synch problems when wanting to convert to other formats such as vcd or divx.

Here's the best way and you will have a final constant framerate, in synch.

Load the wmv file into windows media encoder. Reencode the move as "Uncompressed"

This is important, as you will not lose ANy quality.
This new wmv file can now be opened into virtualdub 1.3c, save as huffy, or frameserv it (using the vdub frameserving guide) to reencode to your preferred format. Feel ree to edit out chunks of the video as well in vdub.

this wqorks on Windows 2000 and Xp, not guarenteed on win98.

note: you will need about 22 gigs HD space for a 320x240, 1 hour 45 minute movie.

Since this method only involves one lossy reencode to your final format, there will be the least possible quality loss.

Do note however, your video may be a bit choppy here and there after conversion to uncompressed, as duplicate frames are aded to make a constant framerate.

Enjoy!

[EddyH]

Do recent quicktimes also use this kind of trickery? Cuz they all seem to report as 600 fps, no matter what the real frame rate is.. some are totally impossible to smoothly convert even when they look ok in QT player, which suggests a variable or totally wierd FR.

[duhmez]

best for quicktime is use quicktime 6 pro, it lets you save as a 60 fps avi with wav audio if you wish, and no frame sync wil happen. Save using huffyuv if you want to reencode to mpeg, and use avisynth to "changedps(29.290)" Avisynth changefps does not affect av sync either.

[oddbod77]

Do recent quicktimes also use this kind of trickery? Cuz they all seem to report as 600 fps, no matter what the real frame rate is.. some are totally impossible to smoothly convert even when they look ok in QT player, which suggests a variable or totally wierd FR.

This seems to be a bug in Quicktime as I had this happen when converting some QT movies to MPEG via an AVISynth script using the QTReader VFAPI plugin.

As far as I can remember QT does not support variable framerates but this gets confused by the fact that you can have several video clips with different framerates contained within a single QT file because, strictly speaking, QT is not a video format, but a media delivery format (like Microsoft's ASF) that can contain video, still pictures, audio and a bunch of other stuff.

[patlorick]

hello regarding to ur post about converting wmv to other format, something i dont' gei it, can you please teach me
i am using encoder 9
but it doesn't work, what do you mean by uncompressed?
what kind of settings should i hv?
there are so many settings, i dont'know which one to adjust~

actually i tried to convert the wmv to mpg with tmpgencoder, but it hangs like 20 mins b4 the movie ends, but the output file is still playable but without the last 20mins, so i awnt to convert this to mpg with windows encoder, can you please help me?
thanks^^

[duhmez]

@ Patlorick. IN windows media encoder, in the options you canm choose a quality setting, by bitrate or type, like for strreaming web, lan etc. In that section you an chose "uncompressed" i dont have encoder 9 in front of me at the moment, but you will find it if you look.
Beware as I said, this is the BEST way, but it does require massive amounts of hard drive space. Not too much of a problem, most of the time WMV clips are small, like ones youll download from p2p etc.

I sugest you read the frameserving guide forr virtualdub, this way if you want to convert to mpg, you dont have to have twice the uuncompressed space.

(as an exampele of the uncomrpessed size, a 320x240 WMV uncimpressed, will probably be about 80-100 gig for 1 hour 30.


Any more questions, go ahead and post them.

[Maurice]

I use the following method to convert WMV to AVI.
Using Windows Movie Maker, I play the file into my digital camcorder using the firewire connection. Once in the camecorder I play it back using any other capture program that works the camecorder. The resulted playback is an AVI file that you can edit, or convert easy to any other format. Quality of the conversion is excellent.

[roadster3043]

Greetings.

Is there any way of doing it in Win98se with another program?

TIA.

[duhmez]

Couple issues. #1, yes you can do it on win98se, BUT THE 4 GIG FILESIZE LIMIT WILL BE AN ISSUE.

HERE IS HOW YO DO IT IN WIN98se.

If you set your media encoder profile to 'uncompressed' you get a huge
WMV file in 'IYUV' codec.

IYUV is the same as I420, released by Intel.

I420 is included in I263 for Win9x.

after installing Intel I263 you get a line in system.ini as:

VIDC.I420=i263_32.drv

if you add:

VIDC.IYUV=i263_32.drv

then you can open your uncompressed WMV in Vdub 1.3.