AVI/WMV Codec Recommendations

jtsteph

I would like to recompress my media to AVI or WMV to take advantage of the new "windows native" payback engine. Can anyone recommend a codec/pipeline?

Currently I have found that WMVs using Windows Media 9 Advanced seems interesting as offloads some of the processing on to the GPU.

Please let me know if you have any recommendations.

Thanks,

Justin

DusX

I suggest using the free Microsoft media encoder. It will bulk convert your files rather quickly, and has many options available. I generally can find a preset that suits my needs.

jtsteph

Thanks DusX,

Thanks for your note.

I am having a really challenging time finding a compression method that will give me solidly smooth playback. For 95% of what I am doing, the occasional skipped frame is not an issue. I do, however, have one long animated pan that look awful with skipped frames. I've tried running isadora at 29.97, 30, 60fps, quicktime, and wmv:

1280X960 75% PJPEG 30fps, and 29.97 fps
960X720 same
720X540 same

I have also tried WMV using Windows media 9 advanced, 9, 8, and 7.

Nothing I have tried is giving me smooth playback. I am running this all off my G750JH from an SSD and GTX780M with 4GB vram.

These clips playback without a hitch in VNC.

At this point, I am settling for quicktime as it is seems to suffer the least from these issues.

I would love to hear any input you might have. We are shooting dress on Wednesday and will try a few more things before then.

Best,

= Justin

DusX

Not sure I have anything to offer, sorry.
It seems that your machine should be able to handle playback (first reading I thought video card?)
I don't have any slow clear pan type videos to do a test with, so I can't even confirm the behavior locally (Unless you want to drop box it to me?)

jtsteph

Hi dusx. Here is a link! https://db.tt/xWTcvkuQ Would love to here your thoughts. Thanks. J

DusX

ah looks like I was too slow.

jtsteph

I have it working in a way that is passable right now using quicktime - which I find much more reliable when playing multiple clips. We're doing a 5 day run, so any input would still be appreciated!

I suspect that there might be a mac in my future :-(

Best,

J

jtsteph

Well we just finished up the run. Super fun. The piece was very well received.

In the work, I found that the Native Windows player introduced a few issues:

I found that it dropped a lot of frames
I found that it would randomly not play clips. If I had 2 or three clips in a scene, it would play the first two but not the third. If I restarted Isadora, it would play them fine until this issue popped up again.

With these two issues present, I went back to using quicktime as it was much more reliable and it dropped less frames.

DusX

I can't say I have noticed frame-drops, but that may be due in part to the style of many of my videos.
but videos not playing, I think I have come across this bug before, and found a work around.. This should probably be looked into in more detail.
I will run some tests.. if I remember correctly there is a case were the video player does init and requires a quick switch of a playback parameter.

mark

Dear DusX,

Yes, please investigate and let me know what you find out.

Best Wishes,
Mark

DusX

Will do.