WMV vs MPEG1

[dv4u]

I just made two one minute clips, one in MPEG1 with tmpeg and one in WMV with windows movie maker

Both were the same source and the same scene. Both were about 10MB but the WMV was superior in quality.

My mpeg settings were 352x240, 2 pass VBR with a max bitrate of 3000, Motion search precision was "highest quality, very slow"

For WMV I chose 1.5Mbps bitrate, NTSC, from the dropdown menu, I coudn't change anything else. I compared the quality of the two after resizing them side by side so they played in the same size window.


I've heard WMV bashed before, and I myself have no love for Microsoft, so my question is: Is WMV better than mpeg1? And if it's not that simple, what are the pro's and con's?

Thanks for any assistance.

[Gazorgan]

I have a lot of WMV backups. Quality wise it is excellant. 2-pass VBR all the way. However, whatever microsoft says is wrong. 64 kbps audio doesn't cut it no matter what they say. If you double the 'adviseable' bitrates you get the 2-pass DivX/XviD quality. Size is almost the same, which you would expect for a 2-pass MPEG4 stream.

I did all my work in WME 7/8. I Won't use WME 9 because it basically ruins your system for any other uses. I was never able to do WME, DivX 3/4/5, and XviD all on the same machine with errors.

[fingernailX]

I have WME9 and Movie Maker 2 and it didn't ruin or do any thing else to my system. I did NOT install DX9 or WMP9. MovieMaker 2 allows you to do simple file conversions and tv captures, all wizard driven and very suitable for a Newbie. It also burns out to a cd in highmat format which the new (2nd or 3rd qtr 03) panasonic dvd players will support and Apex is listed on highmat.com as a partner but no mention of when support will come. If highmat is supported on more DVD players than Divx, ISO-Mpeg 4 or H.264 AND you can make a highmat DVD+-R then I and alot of my comrades we will be all over WMV9. IF is the key point.

[vitualis]

MPEG-1 is quite an old compression scheme and WMV (based on MPEG-4) will offer much better quality at the same bitrate (at the bitrates you are likely to use anyway).

Regards.

[dv4u]

Thanks for the information.

I just downloaded WM Encoder 7.1 - My first impression of the software is that I wish it was more like Tmpeg.

Can anyone recommend a WMV Encoder that has similar functionality to Tmpeg including the ability to cut and merge clips?