Well, it would seem there's nobody out there who's taken up my DivX challenge!

I suppose then, that now some of you have followed my guide and created your own WM9 files, you have come to the same conclusion as me and have found that WM9 really does look better than DivX.

Anyway to add more insult to injury I have now found a way of creating a 6 channel audio stream and adding it to my Windows Media 9 video stream.

So now my 137 min Star Wars 2 test file now includes 6 channel audio and now totals just 744MB.

Seeing and hearing is believing..................

Have you tried wm9 vcm? That way you can just use the original AC3.

PS. You remind me of one of those kids you see going "look at me, look at me!!!!" and everyone is just ignoring them.

No, I hav'nt. And I have to admit I can't remember coming across it in any of the WinMedia9 encoder settings!

However, one of the advantages of re-encoding the original 6Ch .ac3 file to a 6Ch .wma file is that you are able to reduce the file size.

For example Star Wars 2: -
Orig 6Ch .ac3 file = 437MB. New 6Ch .wma file = 127MB

I don't believe you one bit, I'm just too lazy to prove it.

I did my own tests with WMV, and was not impressed at all.

Bugger....I've posted a link in another thread about this whole WM9 media quality debate. Now the quote below is Neo Neko's comment taken directly from this thread in doom9's forum. I think we all should listen to this.

Quote:

I don't know where you are getting the idea it is crap. Because it is not. WM9 is not half bad. But it is not really better than many of the alternatives out there. Having said that the main reasons people choose not to use WM9 are thus. The programs you can encode to WM9 with are rather limited. Your editing options are rather limited. Microsoft provides you with all sorts of software to perform spiffy fades but can't provide simple video clean up filters to treat older video or do quality resizing. WM9 is a closed standard. Microsoft will not make an effort to port it to other OS unlike companies like Real. It simply put is another monopoly maker tool that Microsoft is trying to push to rest the high and low end video markets from their many respective holders and bring them under the Microsoft monopoly umbrella.

You probably think I am paranoid. But that is far from the truth.

The reason MPEG4 is so popular are many. It is the sucessor to the insanely popular and useful MPEG 1 and 2 codecs. The standard is open meaning that anyone can impliment their own version of the encoder which brings competition for better codec tuning. Something which Microsoft simply will not allow. Hardware support with MPEG4 is guaronted long term.

The next thing to watch is h.264. It is part of the MPEG4 specs, but it is so much different from traditional MPEG4 that you are likely to see it as a stand alone codec more than part of a larger MPEG4 codec for a while. I can say with a good bit of certanty that h.264 stands to blow traditional MPEG4, WM9, and RM9 clean out of the running with a bit of spit and polish. I am really anxious to see more people jump on the open source h.264 project. Another great thing about h.264 is that the base profile looks as if it will be possible to impliment with a GPL license which means we should see the possibility for some insane community tweaking and tuning.

//End Quote//.

Well, if SirDavidGuy requires proof. I'm willing to send him a CD.

I've got a 4min 34sec DVD from Jaguar promoting their new range XJ cars. I find it the ideal size to test video codecs.

There are plenty of chroma and lumina bursts, as well as slow and fast speed, live and CGI action.

The content may be out of our reach (or as boring as pants) but it's a good test file all the same.

And I don't think Jaguar are going to mind too much about the free advertising!

I really dislike some of the things in h.264. For instance, they deliberately used an inferior spectral-frequency-subband seperator, based on how precision affects the quality, basically making the standard adapt to what's easy to code.

Also, H.264 is very slow to encode and decode, due to it's many refined-pel modes.

H.264 is still at very early stages. Give it time to mature and am sure it will be favoured in the longer term.

There are two things I'd like to stress out from the quote:
1. The fact that WM9 is a closed standard, and it's just another MS monopoly tool.
2. Hardware support for MPEG4 is better guaranteed in the long term.

I hardly think they will change the transform they are using in this short a time.

I don't believe it, just a few posts later and you've managed to get completely off subject.

So I ask SirDavidGuy. With a given Mpeg2 'video only' source file, can you DivX look better than WM9?

I don't think you can!

I don't think SDG went off subject at all. He was merely commenting on my opinion regarding WM9 media quality debate.

The term 'quality' is also very relative. You may think what you have on your hand constitute a good quality result, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will apply to other people's eyes.

It certainly depends on what you mean. WM9 prefilters the content, so it does better on low-bitrate material. If filtering is allowed, DivX and XviD will almost certainly do better. They will usually also perform better in high-bitrate scenarios.

Thanks for that you guys.

This is the kind of info we need to help with the WM9 -v- DivX debate.

So, if filtering is applied, you can obtain better encodes with DivX at lower bitrates.

Can you provide any 'settings' information (or additional software) that will be required to achieve this?

There must be many of us who would like to know how to squeeze the very best quality out of DivX (or Xvid) at low bit rates!

My Sigma Xcard is'nt redundant yet then!

Well the first thing you will need, well actually I would hope already have is AVISynth, what filters you apply is really up to you, although keep in mind that they could significantly slow down your encoding speed.

Is'nt AVIsynth purely a 'post' production tool.

I was always lead to believe that you should obtain the best image quality during the encoding process. Not in 'post'!

[SOURCE]-->[AVISynth]--->[ENCODER]-->[OUTPUT]

I would hardly call that post.

I'll give it ago then. Many thanks.