MSS2 Conversion Problem

[poisondeathray]

I was wondering how did you get it down to 12kbps ?

Also, there are bunch of listening tests for the ~96kbps range for comparing AAC encoders, but I haven't seen any for this low range? Anybody aware of any ?

[dragonkeeper]

At the command line, I altered the settings in the bat file that ripbot264 creates.

[bat999]

I've looked at this again using Windows.
No extra codec packs are needed for Mencoder.
All that's required is a file named wmsdmod.dll.
It is "Windows Media Screen Decoder".

If you'd like to test it with Windows....
Download MPlayer-1.0rc2 from here:- http://www8.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32/MPlayer-mingw32-1.0rc2.zip
Unzip it and put the wmsdmod.dll file in the folder.
(Use the dll in my attachment or download one from somewhere else.)
Put the ccent10.wmv file in the folder too.
Then Start -> Run -> cmd and cd to MPlayer1-0rc2 folder.
Then use this command:-

mencoder ccent10.wmv -o ccent10.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac faac -faacopts quality=120

To mux the avi file in mp4 afterwards use FFmpeg like this:-

ffmpeg -i ccent10.avi -vcodec copy -acodec copy -absf aac_adtstoasc ccent10.mp4

[jagabo]

No need for VFR. Just use a large GOP size. x264, veryfast preset, crf 26, keyint 1000. Video only in MKV, 1.3 MB, 8 kbps, 40 seconds to encode.

[Mc128k]

Hi guys!
The mencoder solution finally worked for me... after 2 hours of compiling and finding libs. THANK YOU
Now I can convert everything to AVI, but what did you exactly do to make mkv files that small? I didn't understand well how you did it.
: )

[jagabo]

what did you exactly do to make mkv files that small?

x264.exe --preset=veryfast --crf 26 --keyint 1000 --output %1.mkv %1

[bat999]

but what did you exactly do to make mkv files that small?

Hi
My Mencoder samples use the MPEG-4 codec.
The others have used x264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) codec.
x264 creates files less than half the size of MPEG-4.

If you're using Mencoder with Linux or Windows now, these commands will be OK.
Convert wmv to avi:-

mencoder ccent10.wmv -o ccent10.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac faac -faacopts quality=120

Then re-mux the avi in mp4:-

ffmpeg -i ccent10.avi -vcodec copy -acodec copy -absf aac_adtstoasc ccent10.mp4

If you want to use x264 instead of MPEG-4 ask the other guys.

[Mc128k]

Thank you!
Now I've seen all the GUI encoders I have on win and mac are just junk. They make huge files with poor quality.
I'll start converting videos in linux.

Mac supports well h264, so I'm going to try it.

[poisondeathray]

No need for VFR. Just use a large GOP size. x264, veryfast preset, crf 26, keyint 1000. Video only in MKV, 1.3 MB, 8 kbps, 40 seconds to encode.

No need, but VFR certainly helps with this type of material. Using the same encode settings, the video filesize is just over half the size using VFR --preset very fast --crf 26 --keyint 1000

In addition to large GOP, I would fill up the GOP with low cost bframes. This type of material benefits and can actually use 16 consec b-frames when you check the encode logs, unlike typical live action.

If there are a bunch of files to do, VFR is a severe PITA. 2 passes in avisynth are required before even encoding. Personally I wouldn't bother to use VFR. Only if you absolutely need the smallest filesizes - maybe your server is on a dial up in the boonies or something

(I was going to say HDD are cheap, but they have gone up in price recently , due to the floods in Thailand. A 2TB HDD that was $70 is about $130 now in Canada )

But as mentioned earlier, the problem is the audio , not the video. Even at very low bitrates where the audio is distorted, it's still a few times larger than the video

The original is a VFR stream. WMVTimes.exe reports the timecodes as such. x264 on windows can decode this directly as CFR , but it defaults to the 3rd of 4th tier of decoding , which is dss2. x264 can encode VFR directly as well, if it's fed a VFR stream. The problem here is none the source filters are able to feed it VFR. Mencoder streams seem to decode it as CFR as well, so you get the duplicate frames

[poisondeathray]

Now I've seen all the GUI encoders I have on win and mac are just junk. They make huge files with poor quality.
I'll start converting videos in linux.

Mac supports well h264, so I'm going to try it.

Not sure why you say that. The Windows GUI's all use the same h264 encoder in the back end, x264. The linux GUI's do too, as do CLI tools like ffmpeg, mencoder.

If you used the same decoder and dialed in the same settings (GUI or no GUI), you would get exactly the same video if you use the same x264 version and did no other processing

[bat999]

Seems somebody else had this problem with MSS2 too.
It looks like they extracted all the frames as images using mPlayer, then encoded the image sequence with x264.
Here:- https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/336638-Decoding-WMV-%28MSS2-WMAVoice%29-into-anything-!-How