Enragin_Angel

Actually, what I watched were older wmv files. I just tested an actual wmv9 video file and betaplayer was not able to play it. I checked betaplayer's site and there's no separate wmv9 plugin.

victorypoint

Mpgxsvcd, I just tried your 640 x 480 clips on a 1Gb SD Sandisk card and they played very smooth adn continuous after the initial buffering. I also tried the 2 high-res samples. They would buffer, play for about 5 seconds, skip a bit, buffer some more, play for another 5 seconds, etc. I think the high bitrate (+1500kbps) combined with the high resolution was just a bit too much for the Ax. Certainly a faster SD card would help.

I Hope that helps. I can give you SD benchmarks as well from Pocket Mechanic. Looking forward to your DVD to WMV9 encoding tips.

-AJ

mpgxsvcd

Originally Posted by victorypoint

Mpgxsvcd, I just tried your 640 x 480 clips on a 1Gb SD Sandisk card and they played very smooth adn continuous after the initial buffering. I also tried the 2 high-res samples. They would buffer, play for about 5 seconds, skip a bit, buffer some more, play for another 5 seconds, etc. I think the high bitrate (+1500kbps) combined with the high resolution was just a bit too much for the Ax. Certainly a faster SD card would help. I Hope that helps. I can give you SD benchmarks as well from Pocket Mechanic. Looking forward to your DVD to WMV9 encoding tips. -AJ

Great thanks that info helps a lot. I will try to create the guide and profiles this weekend.

mpgxsvcd

Sorry I haven't gotten a chance to write the guide yet. My family has been sick for a couple of weeks now. I also wanted to wait until I got my X50v so I could make sure the wmv files would play properly. The person who was getting the X50v for me bought the wrong one but I am returning that one and I am ordering the X50v now.

victorypoint

Hey, no problem. Get your family well and we'll see you back here soon.

-AJ

mpgxsvcd

I get my X50v on Tuesday. I should be able to do some good testing then.

mpgxsvcd

There are several programs you will need. First off get the Intervideo WinDVD player 6. You can just get the trial version as the only thing you need from it is the decoder. Just install it and you should be good to go. It will stay installed and it only asks you to register it if you go into the program. Now get the DECCHECK program from Microsoft. This nifty utility allows you to control which mpg2 decoder is used by Microsoft to decode the .vob files. It will allow you to set a default decoder of your choice. This is essential because some decoders just don’t work with Windows Media Encoder. I have a fealing that this is the cause of most of the problems. You can download it here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Just install the program and then run it. Select the Intervideo Decoder version 6 as the preferred decoder.

Now rip one of the vob files to your hard drive with smartripper or any program of your choice. Now we can start encoding. That wasn’t so hard was it? Make sure you have Windows Media player 10 and Windows Media player 9 encoder installed. Then open WME9 and close the first dialog box. Just Select File/Open and then the appropriate profile for your particular video from the attached zip file. Next go to the input tab and select the vob file as the input. Note: You will have to click on the “Files of Type” drop down and select the show all option. Then just go to the output tab and select a file name and location where you want the output to go. Then just hit Start encoding button and come back when it is done. You should have a nice wmv file of your video.

I don’t have time to go into more detail but I will come back and edit this post after I have had a chance to test my Axim.

victorypoint

Originally Posted by mpgxsvcd

There are several programs you will need. First off get the Intervideo WinDVD player 6. You can just get the trial version as the only thing you need from it is the decoder. Just install it and you should be good to go. It will stay installed and it only asks you to register it if you go into the program. Now get the DECCHECK program from Microsoft. This nifty utility allows you to control which mpg2 decoder is used by Microsoft to decode the .vob files. It will allow you to set a default decoder of your choice. This is essential because some decoders just don’t work with Windows Media Encoder. I have a fealing that this is the cause of most of the problems. You can download it here. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en Just install the program and then run it. Select the Intervideo Decoder version 6 as the preferred decoder. Now rip one of the vob files to your hard drive with smartripper or any program of your choice. Now we can start encoding. That wasn’t so hard was it? Make sure you have Windows Media player 10 and Windows Media player 9 encoder installed. Then open WME9 and close the first dialog box. Just Select File/Open and then the appropriate profile for your particular video from the attached zip file. Next go to the input tab and select the vob file as the input. Note: You will have to click on the “Files of Type” drop down and select the show all option. Then just go to the output tab and select a file name and location where you want the output to go. Then just hit Start encoding button and come back when it is done. You should have a nice wmv file of your video. I don’t have time to go into more detail but I will come back and edit this post after I have had a chance to test my Axim.

Thanks for the overview and profiles. Do you find that Quality VBR plays smooth on your Axim? How big are the file sizes for a typical DVD? I also noticed your using 24fps without IVTC processing. What is your souce - PAL or NTSC DVDs?

-AJ

mpgxsvcd

I don’t receive my Axim until later today so I haven’t actually tried these files yet. However, I have a sample file from each of those profiles in my trusty 4 Gig Microdrive just waiting to be tested. I made the 3 profiles for the NTSC version of LOTR ROTK. I did not do any telecining because I want to see how Windows Media player 10 will handle the 24 FPS. Plus 24 FPS is a whole lot less processor intensive than 30 FPS. The last profile however will do upto 30 FPS without any telecining. This means that if the video is 24 FPS it will leave it that way and if the video is 30 FPS it will leave it that way. I use the quality VBR because it is does much faster encoding than the two pass VBR encoding does and it keeps constant quality throughout the video. However, I think the quality VBR does require a lot of processing power to decode. Maybe the 24 FPS will offset that. The 2.35:1 aspect ratio should help also. I guess I will find out in a few hours when I get my X50v. I typically get a file size average between 800 kilobits per second and 1400 kilobits per second. I think those profiles I put in the last post will get around 1100 kilobits per second. This should look great on a small screen though. You could probably go down to 400 kilobits per second and not notice any quality loss on a small screen.

Driftless

You might notice the lower quality if you were used to watching high quality vids on a small screen...the VGA screens are MUCH nicer than their qVGA counterparts as far as resolution goes....once you try the higher bitrates and quality...you might not go back to the lower ones...and might even bump up to some DiVX or XVid with a huge CF/SD Card...

I ran a few of my vids through to about 200MB and they looked ok. Doubled to 400MB and ran DiVX compression instead of wmv and was really impressed on how much quality you can get with a small file and the right compression... :approve:

mpgxsvcd

So you have been able to achieve better quality with Divx/Xvid than WMV at the same bit rate? Just wondering because my experience has been that WMV offers the highest quality for a given bit rate. Now WMV can take much longer to encode but in the end it is worth it. You say you encode your files to about 400 MB. How long are those videos? 23 minutes, 30 minutes,1 hour? 360 Megs per hour is plenty for wmv.

Driftless

1.5-2 hour movies...Yeah... wmv always got grainy and skippy for the same file size as Divx...never knew why except for a few sites saying that wmv compression wasn't the best for quality (at the same bitrate and size)...and in order for it to look as good it has to be a bigger file with a higher bitrate.

Not sure, but I do know that Divx and xvid look better on mine than wmv...don't know how to explain it. :D

victorypoint

Originally Posted by Driftless

1.5-2 hour movies...Yeah... wmv always got grainy and skippy for the same file size as Divx...never knew why except for a few sites saying that wmv compression wasn't the best for quality (at the same bitrate and size)...and in order for it to look as good it has to be a bigger file with a higher bitrate. Not sure, but I do know that Divx and xvid look better on mine than wmv...don't know how to explain it. :D

I don't agree. I've compared audio and video quality of many codecs and find WMV9 and Nero Digital (ASP and AVC) offer the best quality at low bitrates. The trick is to know what encoding parameters to tweak.

-AJ

mpgxsvcd

I have come to the same conclusion. I looked at some sample Divx files and I laughed at how poor they were compared to what can be achieved with WMV. The real kicker though is that it looks like 640x480 quality VBR wmv files are just too much for the X50v to handle. I couldn’t get the Axim to reliably play and of my 640x480 files. As you go down in resolution it plays better but it sure would be nice to get the 640x480 ones to play. I tried setting my X50v to 624 Mhz and I closed all other apps but it still could not process it fast enough. Are there any other settings that I could change that might help the video decoding in Windows Media Player? Are there any video playback options for the X50v? I tried copying the files to the X50v and they played much better than off of the memory card but I will need more storage space than what is available onboard.

victorypoint

Originally Posted by mpgxsvcd

I have come to the same conclusion. I looked at some sample Divx files and I laughed at how poor they were compared to what can be achieved with WMV. The real kicker though is that it looks like 640x480 quality VBR wmv files are just too much for the X50v to handle. I couldn’t get the Axim to reliably play and of my 640x480 files. As you go down in resolution it plays better but it sure would be nice to get the 640x480 ones to play. I tried setting my X50v to 624 Mhz and I closed all other apps but it still could not process it fast enough. Are there any other settings that I could change that might help the video decoding in Windows Media Player? Are there any video playback options for the X50v? I tried copying the files to the X50v and they played much better than off of the memory card but I will need more storage space than what is available onboard.

I'm still experimenting but I'm having great success encoding NTSC widescreen movies by frameserving to WME (using AviSynth) using WMV9 @ 400kbps bVBR and WMA9.1 @ 96kbps 48khz stereo bVBR. I get choppy playback when using Quality-VBR. For high bitrate playback, you're best bet for now is to encode to mp4 (e.g. Nero Digital ASP) and playback with Betaplayer (with Intel 2700G support).

-AJ