Freeware to encode to WMV (w-WMA audio) video?

[Diana (Cda)]

Good Morning, everone!

These portable devices are a pain! Thanks to this website I found a great app to use to convert videos to my brother's PSP handheld - WinFF. No fuss, no muss and he's good to go. I also managed to figure out an app for his new Sony Walkman which needs MP4, I think I used WinFF for that, too.

So, I'm left with one big headache - his old Sony Walkman which takes ONLY, if one can really believe this, WMV video with WMA audio. And it's REALLY persnickety.00

For him, he's only needed 2 types of videos - his favourite TV show and his favourite band. And I've been lucky in the Any Video Converter freeware that works as a standalone, has always done the job for him. But now that he has his new Walkman, he's given me his old one and I'm not so lucky. I've run numerous TV eps and movies through AVC and all of them have audio synch issues _big-time_! <sigh> Unlike his show and band videos, my video choices all seem to have synch problems in end WMV output.

So coming back to the forum after days since Boxing Day fighting with this issue before I toss this device out the window!

Here's the thing, not just any video/audio works on this darn thing. Here are the specs for what works and _only_ videos encoded to this work:

WMV = WMV9 codec (v8 _won't_ work), 176x144 frame size, 768 bitrate
WMA = AVC says WMA 9.2, A/V Sync = I've tried both Basic and Default options but audio synch _always_ occurs

I know it's long shot but does anyone know of a portable/standalone freeware app that doesn't require .NET framework or java to be installed ... that like AVC has WMV/WMA re-encoder capabilities ??

I've tried _all_ the freeware options in the TOOLS section of this forum, even the ones that need installing, that come up with the "to WMV" option selected but every single trial didn't produce good results. Either the Walkman didn't recognize video or if it did, device wouldn't play and said incompatible. Could just be something simple like not being able to finetune settings a bit like AVC at least allows us to do.

Thanks in advance!

[jman98]

Just a few random comments first...
You Canadians celebrate Boxing Day? I suspect that 99% of Americans wouldn't even know what that is.

Your brother has a NEW Walkman? Damn, he needs to get in the 21st century. Seriously. There's a strong suspicion that Apple may soon abandon the iPod and at least that's modern. If your brother wasn't married to the Walkman and had an iPod he'd at least be able to play MP4 vides at better resolutions than what his Walkman takes.

WMV9 is deprecated. It's not officially supported by Microsoft any more. Because Microsoft owns patents on it and enforces them (ie. programs that use them are supposed to pay license fees) there's not a lot that can encode that way. Microsoft no longer officially distributes their old Windows Media encoder for version 9 so you're going to have to find that somewhere. I'm quite serious - if you're not willing to stand up to your brother and say "Look, it's just too hard to support your weak and ancient technology any more" maybe you should just buy him an iPod and at least get him in the modern world. Let me guess - he's a smartphone luddite too and he's doesn't own a smartphone where at least you could just encode to that.

[Diana (Cda)]

Yeah re Boxing Day. I suspect though, that it isn't so much a holiday as an excuse for free enterprise. None of us really _do_ anything on Boxing Day but the stores go nuts!! And many spend tons of money on the supposed sales ...

I _hear_ you re my brother's Walkman! Seriously. I'm the one that has to do all the work, so believe me, I've told him in the past but he doesn't really get it (obviously). Hopefully I can eventually wean him off the damned Walkman thing (I've been trying)! See, they sucked him in. He doesn't know one player from another one so when he saw the new one on sale _and_ it comes with a speaker that it can dock into, he was sold! <sigh> Yes, it sure is nice and all but the new one doesn't do some things the old one did even though the old one is a pain to encode for! I mean, seriously, WMV9 only???!!!

Still, if I can get the audio synch issue taken care of, this one will do me till I can afford to get my own. A real player, even if dinky, is better than the invisible/non-existent one I had before <g> ... my status before he passed on his old one to me after I returned the new one back to him which was actually a Xmas gift to ME! (Yeah, did I feel like a bad sister but _I'm_ the one doing all the work and I told him the truth - that this one would make me lose my hair with all the pulling out I was doing!! <lol>)

Actually, he has a BlackBerry Storm and he's cool with that. He does more with his BB than I do with mine. But mine is just a phone for me. I get chased at home via email and at work, so last thing I want is for people to be emailing me when I'm on the road busing around. I consider that my escape time when I escape all that. <g>

But today I am going to check out the players in one of the big store chains we have here in Canada. I can't buy anything right now but I'm now very curious to check out the few that online say they do what I need. As I told my brother, the only player I'll be getting is one that plays my AVI files _as_is_ with no stupid re-encoding like his Walkman and even his PSP Portable need! And no iPod for me, either!! No way to any proprietary software! Simple drag-'n-drop works best for me.

p.s., my dad's flat screen TV plays my AVIs as is off a USB stick as well as my little cheapie media player I bought at Wal-Mart last year so the market already accommodates AVIs easily. My old DVD Recorder plays all my AVIs, too. But glad that I no longer have to burn to disk all the time! Anyway, unlike my brother, I'll be transferring videos back and forth all the time! So, a straight player is all I'll need.

But still still looking for a standalone/portable freeware that will handle WMVs for his Walkman in the meantime. Even when I give it back to him, he'll still keep it as backup probably or pass it along to one of our cousins. I'll be handling re-encoding for this player one way or another for the foreseeable future <sigh>.

Thanks.

[aedipuss]

i think mediacoder may be able to create your walkman video. it may take some tweaking of the settings. see if this one plays.

[Diana (Cda)]

Thanks for the tip! I'm going to try it now. It's ad-ware which is disappointing but I'll see how the install goes. I'm really disappointed with my brother's old Walkman that he passed along to me. Maybe this app will produce better results. All the videos I've re-encoded have audio synch issues which drives me absolutely nuts!

The audio synch issues are pretty constant with Any Video Converter which is one of the only freeware apps I've found that handles _output_ to WMV9 video _and_ VMV9 audio. The developer of AVC said they'd fix the VBR issue - since AVC has option to save to CBR but VBR comes out. But I've tried later versions and they still haven't. Also, the latest version chokes on all WMV output and fails each time so it doesn't even re-encode to WMV at all!

My brother and I went window shopping last Monday to see the different types of MP3 players out there but found nothing that day fit the bill. I definitely will only buy an MP3 Player that allows drag-n-drop (no proprietary software) and that supports AVI ... they are out there, just rare. This re-encoding business is such a pain. I'm just lucky that I need to re-encode videos for him only rarely because between his Walkman and PSP Portable, my PC handles quite a bit of a load when I do go through a conversion session for him! <g>

[Diana (Cda)]

i think mediacoder may be able to create your walkman video. it may take some tweaking of the settings. see if this one plays.

Thanks aedipuss (is that a play on "Oedipus"?)!

You prompted me to try this app out again. It is ad-ware and when I looked at it some time back, I found many warning messages in forums about it. But I just took care again not to install any extras and I blocked it from my firewall. I then copied the folder and uninstalled the app and I think I did go back and remove all registry entries. Like the last time it seems to be working just fine as an uninstalled standalone, but a reboot will see if that's the case; and an OS wipe/reinstall down the road will further test whether or not it works by itself without installing. The ad-ware issues mean I won't be putting this on my flash drive to use on other host computers, but, meh, I can live with that.

So far it has successfully re-encoded 2 short test AVIs and the Walkman recognizes them and plays them, all so far without the usual audio synch errors, so it looks good to go! I'm converting a movie right now and will test that. I took a few tests before I tweaked all the settings but they were easy to save to a preset so that part is really great, too.

On the down side besides the ad-ware issues, the drag-n-drop stinks as files dropped in get the names changed to punctuation marks so must OPEN and introduce files that way to the app. But again, no real concern. As long as it works. This MP3 Player is just till I can afford my own. And Mediacoder seems to be quite fast. The movie is 3/4 of the way done and it's only been re-encoding for about 15-20 minutes. So I'm really keeping my fingers crossed that it does work because the speed and potential lack of audio synch issues make it a winner despite the negatives.

I'll report back either way.

[Diana (Cda)]

Okay, coming back with some feedback ... first of all, I have to say that although conversion to WMV has been a pain to resolve, at least there is the side benefit that this little 8gig player holds a TON of stuff on it. My sizing script says I have half of the disk still left empty yet I have 1 full length movie, 4 short one-hour movies, and 26 TV episodes @ 45 minutes long each! Not bad.

But here's the scoop on MediaCoder - yep, for sure there are a couple of things to be leery of. First off, it needing an internet connection is, imo, bad. But here at home, I've blocked it with firewall so it retaliates in what I hope turns out to be as harmless as just this popup box - the error comes up about once an hour or so and says: "Please make sure MediaCoder is able to connect to Internet.". That wouldn't be so bad if while that error box with OK button is up, the encoding wasn't completely halted until you hit that OK. Not good.

The other problem is its intolerance for you doing too much on your PC at the same time. Popup comes up frequently saying something was "blocking" MediaCoder or something and to ensure that you weren't using up too many resources or doing too much at once or something like that. Anyway, encoding is halted completely _again_ until you press that OK button _again_. Which is why even though I left MediaCoder working overnight, it didn't get very far during the night.

So I'm going to investigate how to write up a script to counteract these flaws. I'm going to use AutoIt (AI) and I'm hoping that there'll be a way for AI to check for the error message text so that it can then press that OK button for me. I'll set up the script to loop for ever x minutes to avoid any halts in encoding in future when I'm away from PC, or sleeping.

On the plus side, MediaCoder is FAST. And so far, no audio synch issues whatsoever. _And_ the settings can be saved. So despite everything, it'll do for now.

Cheers.