Mike

I am impressed with the sound quality of the lowest VBR encoding of Windows Media 9. I can't believe some songs are under a meg and sound so good. I am a bit of an audiophile. I rarely download MP3s from the net because most sound like crap to me, even at what sometimes seemed ridiculously high encoding rates. When I did encode my own MP3s I'd use my favorite compressor and codec to get them so sound as near to CD as possible with a smaller size. I could normally get a good quality at 128, sometimes I had to go to 160 and rarely 192.

One big reason I got a PocketPC (my Axim) was to use it as an MP3 player. I also wanted to replace my dying USR Pilot5000 (yes, the original Palm PDA). I just got a 256MB Compact Flash card and was happy, but not thrilled with the amount of music I could hold on it. So, I started playing around with Media 9 and re-encoding some of my CDs using the lowest VBR setting. I swear that many, if not most sound better than my 128bit MP3s. I haven't tried converting the good MP3s I do have which I can't find the CDs for into WMA, but that's next.

However, I am not thrilled with the playback of WMVs. I have some pretty small ones, like Triumph from Conan O’Brien, which fills the screen perfectly in landscape mode. The main problem is it drops a lot of frames. It seems I get at most 5 FPS. At least the audio stays clear the whole time. It’s a 17MB WMA and the video is ~10min long. I plan to search the forums and read up more on the video options for my new toy, er um, tool. :D

Mike C

hereYou might try the encoder on pocketmatrix.com . I've been scrunching home vids this evening and have finally gotten some good stuff ... in avi format, which some say WMP will play, but no dice for me. I use PocketMVP for avi and get good quality that must be at least 15fps, vid size of 240 x 160. File size went from 16.6 to 2.95 meg. Still learning the tweaks, but there is hope.
WM encoder works pretty good for WMV, but the sound is bad. Need to change it to mono, but didn't see a switch for that.

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Mike

Mike

Thanks Mike C.

I was playing around with it and 3 different version of Windows Media Encoder last night (7.1, 8 and 9). I don't know what happened, but I can no longer rip or play Audio CDs from Windows Media Player 9. :( I can pop a CD in and click "Copy Music" (or whatever the button is called) and it goes through them VERY fast. I noticed the WMA files that it is now saving are very tiney and when I play them all I hear are distorted clicks and pops, no music. Also, when I go to play the Audio CD via WMP9 I hear the same thing!! I swear it was just working perfectly yesterday. It's set to record and play "digital", and I'm using Windows 2K. If anyone has had this happen, please tell me how to fix it. I tried the uninstall/reinstall thing over and over last night with all the software I was playing with. I don't know what happened....

Windows Media Encoder - Does anyone use their "file conversion" feature? I tried this on a .wav and it seems to have a major problem on my PC. I clicked browse, found the .wav file and click okay or open. All I got was an hourglass and after a while it appeared the app had stopped responding. And, it does this every time, on all three versions...sigh, I may have to reinstall my OS, again.

NMkiD

Yeah I was also impressed with the quality of the .wma files, I have a couple of whole albums on my pocket pc, ranging from the soundtrack from lord of the rings to the em show and I still have plenty of room for other stuff. Just goes to show how great a device these things are.

I remember people also complaining of the sound quality of the Dell, I think its great, its pretty loud w/ the earphones off and with them on sometimes on the lowest settings its still too loud for me when its totally quite and my fiancee is asleep and I'm doing things on it.

laterz.

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Mike

Ya NMkiD... I do think the speaker is weak. If I turn it up over 1/2 way on WMP it gets distorted, but it sounds great through my headphones.

Mike C

WMP 9 has some serious issues in my opinion. I don't understand what you meant by playing around w/ different versions ( sheds a tear for WMP 7 ) but I think their &quot;upgrades&quot; are like permanent and irrevocable.
Did you mean re-do your W2K OS? Damn! I feel your pain.

Is it just me, or do others find WMP 9 incapable of simply playing an audio disk? The simplest action it can be handed, and it's full of noise, drop-outs, and what sounds like pitch changes. The stupid app &quot;CD Player&quot; is far superior.

For these reasons I am leery of wasting any time encoding stuff to WMV. It will play, put the other Pocket apps are just better.

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Mike

Mike

Quote:

Originally posted by Mike C@Jan 2 2003, 03:01 PM WMP 9 has some serious issues in my opinion.  I don't understand what you meant by playing around w/ different versions Did you mean re-do your W2K OS? Damn!  I feel your pain. WMV doesn't impress me much, but WMA does....

I noticed there were three different versions of Windows Media -Encoder- (not player) available 7.1, 8.0 and 9 (release candidate). I tried them all. Supposedly each version has a better codec which gives you better quality and a smaller files size.

From what I've read if you are using XP you have to set WMP9 to record and play CDs via &quot;analog&quot; (the internal audio cable from the CD-ROM to your sound card) rather than digital audo extraction. I am using 2K and &quot;digital&quot; was working fine the other day. I also installed the DivX stuff and had Kazaa running. So I really don't know what hosed my WMP and all I know is I can't seem to get it working again. :(

Yes, I meant reinstall W2K all over again. :o

Mike C

The fact remains that PPC WMP doesn't play or even recognize mp3, as far as I can tell. This seems like a deliberate omission, so they can monitor and/or control content. I don't like that.
WMP does play WMA very well, but the couple tunes I ripped from my personal disks were full of skips and drop-outs ... maybe because I was multi-tasking, I dunno ... YMMV. I don't claim to know all about this stuff at all.

I could use a good tutorial on the BEST way to do this, fully optimized for the PPC. Apparently the platform has a lot to do w/ it.
WME is the only way I have right now to create content for reduced storage space from my CDs. I don't download.

What do you use to create original (virgin) mp3s?

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Mike

Mike

:D What do ya know, I get home tonight and I am able to rip and play CDs again. Very strange, but I'm just happy.

As for MP3 I use(d) MP3 Profressional Pro 2.1 and if I didn't like the sound that I got with that (rare) I'd use a LAME codec.

Simon

Ive been messing with audio and video compression since my SD memory came today. i tryed compressing some music videos in divx first using 5.0.2 but it didn't play well i kept getting squares. Has that happened to any of you?

So i tryed Win media encoder 7.1 and it seemed to work great at 250kbps it was 2MBs per 1min of video.
I wonder if there is a good audio player that plays Ogg files for PPC 2002? i havn't messed with it much but a friend of mine says its a great compression much better than mp3.

Mike C

PocketMVP plays ogg.

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Mike

Mike

That GSPlayer that I mentioned in the Shoutcast post also plays them. I read you can't use the 5.x codec yet with the PocketDivX player. Try 3.x or 4.x

Mike C

For what it's worth, I figured out my problem w/ WMP playing mp3s. It works.

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Mike

JSnoddy

I'm very pleased with the WMA files I've created and loaded to my Axim with WM9. An amazing amount of music can fit on a 256MB SD card!

One problem: Media Player on the Axim seems to take forever to load the next song. I didn't try to create any custom play lists. Just copied the files to the Axim & selected shuffle mode. The time display continues after the music stops & then the next song comes up. It is almost as though WM9 added blank space to the end of each track. Hmm. Wonder if recording an entire CD at a time caused WM9 to actually do that?

Handy

Has anybody compared ogg files to wma files? I have a lot stuff I've ripped to ogg format. I'm wondering how it compares to wma.