I have a friend of mine (I’ll not name names, and it’s nobdy I work with at work) who constantly brags that XviD and DivX video compression is the best thing since sliced bread. Constantly claims that he can fit an entire movie on a CD.
That sounds impressive enough, but he also knows that I like Windows Media for doing video and audio, so he always puts it down in comparison to his favorite video formats. He does it to get a rise out of me. Of course, most of the time, I just ignore him because I know better.
After a while, I got tired of this, so I started asking him specifics about it. Could he fit the full DVD resolution in? What about the audio?
Come to find out, that video resolution isn’t full DVD resolution, but slightly scaled down to 640 by whatever the height is to meet the aspect ratio of the film.
Same thing with audio… not 5.1 sound… Stereo Pro-Logic and downsampled from 48KHz to 44.1KHz and 16 bits.
I asked him about meta tagging. Can I put the disk in any PC or have it on the hard drive or in Windows Media Player (or any other player for that matter) and be able to browse a collection of movies I’ve converted over from DVD to video files on the hard drive in a jukebox like fashion like I can with MP3s?
His answer? “Not really… Why would you want to do that?” Ummm… because I’ve got hundreds of movies and TV shows on my hard drives, and it makes it 100 times easier to manage and find what you want to watch…
Can I put book-marks or chapter markers in certain places in the file so you can jump to straight to them in your player? In DivX 6 you can, but it only works with their player.
The questions go on and on… He either can’t answer most of them or has to answer no, and etc, etc…
I then tell him that Windows Media 9 does all that I just asked him about. He of course didn’t believe me and then challenged me to prove it. I said, “Pick a movie.” He said, “The Bourne Identity”. I said “OK”.
And so here we are. I’ve ripped “The Bourne Identity” from DVD and converted it to a wmv file, and he’s done the same except converted his to a Divx video file.
His does not have 5.1 sound, it’s just stereo, but at least it’s Pro-Logic encoded, and not 44.1KHz sample rate.
His video is 720×306, so technically, it’s DVD quality, but not really. The video on the DVD has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 It’s an anamorphic DVD, so the masking is applied so that on the disk, the video is 720×360, so to get the correct aspect ratio, you have to either keep the height on the DVD the same and stretch it out horizontally to 846×360, or do what he did by keeping the width the same at 720 pixels wide, and squeeze the height of the picture down to 306 pixels. I prefer to stretch is out horizontally because then you don’t lose any vertical height, and 360 lines of resolution scales up to 720p HDTV pretty nicely.
At any rate, with him doing what he did, he managed to come up with a video file that is just barely under the 700MB needed to fit on a CD. I watched the video, and it’s not DVD quality to say the least. It’s what I’d expect for VHS quality, except that it’s widescreen.
Now, let’s talk about what I managed to get with my wmv file. The video is a full 846×360 DVD resolution with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I ran inverse telecine on it to get it from the 30 frames per second on the DVD to the film 23.976 frame rate it was shot in, and I de-interlaced the video.
The audio is a real gem. I extracted the Dolby Digital 5.1 digital audio stream into it’s own AC3 file, then extracted each discrete channel into it’s own mono audio file. The net result after I encoded all that into the wmv file is a full 5.1 sound track at a 48KHz sample rate and 24 bit audio.
So what’s the end result I got doing this academic encoding exercise? A single Windows Media Video file with full DVD resolution, 5.1 full range audio, all the meta tagging needed to manage it in Windows Media Player, chapter markers that match the chapters on the DVD, and a file size of 614MB, besting my friends file size by nearly 100MB with higher resolution video and better audio.
When watching the WMV file, the video quality while not what I would call flawless DVD quality (even though it’s easily mistaken for the real DVD unless you know what to look for in compression artifacts), is considerably better looking than the Divx file.
That was the end of constantly having to hear about how great Divx and Xvid are.
Scoble, I don’t know who to thank at Microsoft for coming up with such a great format for audio and video, but it’s first rate. Can you thank them for me?
Outstanding…I did something similar a while back with the same movie just to see what it looked like fit on a CD-R. Here’s what I got:
742Kbps
720 x 480
Windows Media Audio 9.1 Professional
128 kbps, 48 kHz, 5.1 channel 24 bit (A/V) 1-pass CBR
I used Windows Media Video V8 because I didn’t want to take 14 hours to encode it (I’m not real patient) so I know I could have gotten a higher bitrate and used Version 9 if I wanted to wait it out.
Care to share your exact profile settings?
Whoops…forgot to put in the specs that the file comes out to 609Mb.
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Yes, I encoded the video at VBR 512Kbps average and 1.5Mbps peak and the audio 128Kbps average with 192Kbps peak.
The video was WMV9 and the audio was WMA 9.1 Pro
Obviously the video was 846×360, progressive and 24 frames per second, and the audio was 5.1 48Khz, 24 bits
I did everything in two pass… It took several hours to encode.
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Adrian
Your blog shows an expertise that I applaud. How did you learn how to use media 9 so well? That’s not really my question though. As you seem to know what you are talking about can you help me out?
I’ve been using WME9 to rip convert a ripped DVD to a 240MB file for viewing on a PDA. It was working until recently. I now find that the video still works but there is no audio. Any idea what I might have done wrong.
Obliged for any guidance you can give.
Cheers
The Rhyme Maker
Hi Rhyme Maker,
I just use Windows Media Encoder a lot, you only get good at using tools by using them. I’ve been using WME9 for years.
In terms of the problem your having, do you mean that the encoding settings stopped doing it, or the video files stopped working even though they were working before?
I can’t really help you without more information.
If the video files that you’ve had for a while stopped working, I don’t know what’s wrong with that.
If the encoding part of it somehow got messed up, you need to make sure that the audio settings are correct.
Hi Adrian
The ones I did still work fine. It’s the ones I’m trying to do now that don’t have any audio. Picture is fine and encodes ok, just no audio. Not a peep.
When encoding I used to see the L & R level indicators going, but now nothing? I’ve checked my sound card settings, nothing on mute, all levels up. What else should I be checking.
Much obliged for any advice.
Rhyme Maker
Are you converting a file or are you just pulling in video and audio from a capture device (be it an add-in card or USB/Firewire Audio/Video capture device)?
If you’re converting a file on your hard drive (and the audio is part of the video file), then your sound card settings should have no ill effect on the audio. If you use the convert wizard in wme9 it should get you audio, otherwise the file you’re converting may be corrupt or not supported in wme.
If your converting the VOB file directly, that’s not likely to work, especially if the audio is a 5.1 dolby digital track. WME9 doesn’t know what to do with Dolby Digital AC3 sound. Some DVD’s have a different audio format on the disk that converts just fine, but AC3 audio will hose you up every time. Converting the VOB file (and it’s AC3 audio) is complicated enough that I’d suggest doing some research on it because I can spend hours explaining it here, and I don’t have the time.
If you’re capturing video and audio on the fly live, then it’s a whole nother ball park.
In that instance, if you’re capturing video with a video capture device, but piping the audio into your sound card, under the windows volume control applet, you need to select options->properties (this is with the applet open and showing all the volume controls).
That should pop up a properties dialog box. There should be playback and recording radio buttons near the top. Select the recording radio button. Make sure all the volume controls check boxes are selected and hit ok. You should now see all your inputs with the volume controls. You have to make sure that the input that you have the audio plugged into has it’s checkbox selected otherwise it will not record your audio. Once you do that (and it’s the right checkbox) you can make the volume as low or as high as you like and then close that volume control window.
When you go into windows media encoder and select your sound card as the audio input source, you should now see and hear the sound as it encodes the movie.
If you’re recording video and audio directly from your capture device, you just need to make sure you’re selecting that audio input in wme9 instead of your sound card and it should work.
If this doesn’t get you on the right path to getting your audio working again, you may have some other audio configuration issue (or bad hardware) that I can’t diagnose over the internet.
Thanks for your details above.
I was converting a VOB directly and your comment re some DVD’s having different audio format must be the reason.
What I did was using Smart Ripper, I ripped the DVD to a single VOB file. Then used WME9 to encode it, sound track and all. It worked every time and i have over 20 files down to just under 240MB for transfre to a flash card to watch on my PDA. Then it just wouldn’t work.
I did read that WME9 would not support VOB, and indeed, using the Pocket PC wizard VOB was not an extension I could use, unless I selected “all files” and picked it from there.
Strange that they all worked though huh? I even used the same technique to rip the audio from a DVD (using smart ripper again but selecting only the audio stream) and then converting it to a .wmv to burn onto an audio CD (I love the end credit scores to movies and built a collection using this technique.)
Ah well. What I want to do is be able to convert some TV shows I record to a HDD unit then transfer to DVD so I can watch them on the move on my PDA. I’ll do some more research into the easiest software to use for that.
Much obliged for your time and info.
Rhyme Maker
Not a problem…
One way to work around it is have one of the tools output the Dolby Digital stream to a stereo wav and select that as the audio source… I use DVD2AVI and you can optionally demux the audio to just a stereo wav.
Will try that.
I did manage to convert the VOB using DVDx and then encoded it with WME. It’s lengthy but it works.
There will come a day when all this will automatic and lightening fast and we’ll be sitting on a porch watching the young uns playing and say “I remember when………..”
I found myself doing that (not the porch bit…not yet..!) talking to someone about my very first computer…..a Sinclair ZX Spectrum..still got it too!!
Oh happy days of loading programms from a cassette, waiting 10 mins and then it crashes at the end……….maybe you’re too young to know what I’m talking about…..who knows.
Enough ramble
Cheers
I would agree with most everything. Here are two sites to reference the 5.1 issue – http://davidmuxo.com/DVD2WMV/DVDtoWMV.htm and http://microsoftuse.temp.powweb.com/zarax/dvd_index.htm
I have seen one issue – If I play back the VOB file the black color is true black but the ripped file looks dark grey and shifts the rest of the colors. This is also present in the Input screen to Outpu screen durring encoding – brilliant colors in and so-so colors out. Interestingly if you use the trick of renaming the .VOB to .MPG and play the file I go from great black tone to dark grey as well. Any ideas?
Snowhound,
I’ve seen that same issue with the colors, and I think it has to do with the fact that most DVDs are some type of YUV, and when it’s ripped, it’s treated as RGB. I haven’t confirmed it, but I have noticed that on converted files, where everything seems to shift a couple of ticks towards white making the blacks a dark grey and the colors slightly pale in comparison to what is shown. I might play around with it… I know WME supports different YUV formats, it’s really just getting it down to the right one to match the DVD your ripping.
Pretty cool info you have here. I am confused though, what would be the steps to get 5.1 sound from AC3 to work in 5.1 in the new file?
Great post, made for an amusing read as I’m in the process of having the same discussion with some Dixv fans myself.
I have a question if you don’t mind taking the time to help: You mention keeping the chapters. In my experiments so far I’ve found the editor utility (installed with WME 9) that can add markers to the files after they’re encoded. Is this what you referring to?
It seems to only half work. Markers can be used to jump in WMP using nested menus but the chapter buttons on the front of the player are grayed out. Also using an external player (an Xbox 360 reading from a USB HDD/Flash drive, for example) there doesn’t seem to be any way to access markers at all. Pressing chapter skip just moves 30 seconds in either direction.
Is this a problem with my choice of WMV players or is there a further trick beyond adding the markers?
Hi Rob,
Yes, that was what I was referring to… I don’t think the transport controls in windows media player are for wmv files, I think they’re for mpeg-2 streams (i.e. DVDs, wm-dvr files from media center, etc.), and to my knowledge, those are not the same type of markers…
So while we can in fact put markers in the files, few players actually support them (I’ve found that even microsoft’s own players don’t fully support all the functionality that Windows Media’s Advanced Systems Format has in it, which is a shame… it wouldn’t be that hard to make those buttons apply to the markers when playing any ASF-formatted based file (WMV, WMA, etc.).
Cool, okay thanks. Sounds like I need to wait for a dashboard update before I can expect this to work on the 360. Odd that it hasn’t happened all ready as they must written the code to handle the new (non-mpeg) transport streams for the HD-DVD add-on…