Problem rendering in .wmv codec

[Martinfalch]

Hey people!

I'm going to be rendering totpIII in not tooo long and I suddenly get a specific problem when rendering in .wmv. For this reason I experimented with some Xvid codecs with dopefish, but it doesn't seem to turn out just as nice as the wmv codec, hence I'd like to try and see if I can get my problem fixed.

Basically it has worked perfectly so far to render in wmv, but suddenly I get some sort of bug when it's rendered - basically the first part of the clip (say it's a 5 min clip, the first part might be the first 2 min) is fine quality. But then suddenly it becomes very low and sometimes extremely low quality for the remaining half - the excact lengths and points of the clips where it goes low quality differs, so I'm not quite sure what causes this problem.

It looks a bit as if the bitrate suddenly goes way down, though I don't know how that could be

If anyone have tried similar problems please let me know!

Also, do you know if I can safely reinstall vegas to try and see if that works or will I risk screwing up stuff like paths etc?

- Martin Falch

[soosisti]

I've used WMV very rarely, so I can't give you any exact advices. But one thing that comes to my mind that are you using the variable bitrate (VBR) setting of the WMV codec? If yes, try to switch to the constant bitrate (CBR) setting of it and see if that helps.

I had some lagging, crashing and bugging issues with Vegas some weeks ago. It was all solved when I added another Windows page file and more size to it.

For the Vegas install / uninstall - I did that once and all my files opened OK after that. Backing up the original directory never hurts though.

The last alternative is to render the movie in uncompressed format, that is if you have the hard drive space for it. Even though the file will be big, it's quality will be 100% perfect and it should be quite easily compressable to other formats.

GL with the renders

[stormrager]

Like soosisti siad WMV has 2 modes. VBR and CBR; change it to CBR and se if that works. If not try then rendering it uncompressed if you have the disk space(I assume you do because of all the footage you have).

You can than use Virtualdub to compres it into many formats like Divx and Xvid. I'd suggest using Divx over Xvid since more people have the Divx codec than anything else.

What version of vegas do you have by-the-way?

[Thiras]

Originally Posted by stormrager

You can than use Virtualdub to compres it into many formats like Divx and Xvid. I'd suggest using Divx over Xvid since more people have the Divx codec than anything else.

False. Xvid and divx are the same codecs, and they can both decode eachother when present.

For encoding purposes they're the same but xvid does a slightly better job and doesn't come bundled with spyware.

edit: As for the OPs question, the wmv codec isn't included with vegas as such to my knowledge. Reinstalling it would probably not yield any results. I'd advice using xvid since in my experience it always beats wmv when given the same bitrate to play with (and proper configuration, of course).

If you really want to use WMV you should reinstall the newest version of windows media player (codecs are bundled)

[Martinfalch]

Thanks for all the tips people!

It's variable bitrate atm, setting it to a fixed bitrate yielded a huge sizeincrease, though I might experiment a bit with that!

Am I right in assuming that in theory with the right configurations etc, xvid/divx should give a better quality/size ratio than wmv? I guess so at least.

- Martin

[Thiras]

Originally Posted by Martinfalch

Thanks for all the tips people!

It's variable bitrate atm, setting it to a fixed bitrate yielded a huge sizeincrease, though I might experiment a bit with that!

Am I right in assuming that in theory with the right configurations etc, xvid/divx should give a better quality/size ratio than wmv? I guess so at least.

- Martin

Yep.

Variable bitrate is always the method to go BTW. Even though CBR may work somewhat it isn't really good.

Say you have scene A and scene B. Both are 2 seconds in length (total 4)

Your movie uses a bitrate of 8000 kbit (meaning ~1 megabyte per second).

CBR would give each clip 2 megabytes to play with. If clip 1 is more complex (more motion f.ex.) it'd look worse than clip 2.

VBR would then give, say, 3 megabytes to clip 1 and 1 megabyte to clip 2 - making them look equally good.

CBR usually makes simple scenes look overly good and complex scenes overly bad. Hope this cleared it up somewhat

[Sheril]

Originally Posted by Martinfalch

Hey people!

I'm going to be rendering totpIII in not tooo long and I suddenly get a specific problem when rendering in .wmv. For this reason I experimented with some Xvid codecs with dopefish, but it doesn't seem to turn out just as nice as the wmv codec, hence I'd like to try and see if I can get my problem fixed.

Basically it has worked perfectly so far to render in wmv, but suddenly I get some sort of bug when it's rendered - basically the first part of the clip (say it's a 5 min clip, the first part might be the first 2 min) is fine quality. But then suddenly it becomes very low and sometimes extremely low quality for the remaining half - the excact lengths and points of the clips where it goes low quality differs, so I'm not quite sure what causes this problem.

It looks a bit as if the bitrate suddenly goes way down, though I don't know how that could be

If anyone have tried similar problems please let me know!

Also, do you know if I can safely reinstall vegas to try and see if that works or will I risk screwing up stuff like paths etc?

- Martin Falch

I thing your problem caused by using low average bitrate when encoding a VBR WMV video.

I have encoded my video with near all the codecs and formats.So my experience may be helpful to you.
WMV format with WMV9 codec is very ideal if your video has higher resolution, to have similar video quality in high res(1024*768 and 720P+) AVI format (with all the codecs,XVID,WMV9,etc.)takes much more space.Also,the PC hardware requirement of AVI is more rigorous than WMV when you want to render high quality video.
AVI format provides better quality in high-motion video compared to WMV(much more than Real Media),and clearer visual feeling sometimes cuz WMV seems to be covered with a thin gray mask usually.
MOV format(with MPEG4,H264 codec,etc.)has better color contrast than any other format.But takes more space in high res as well.

I suggest you to encode you video with WMV9 codec into WMV format, by using 2-pass VBR constraind bitrate(peak).
2-pass VBR did better than CBR when the movie is not short ,variable camera speed and lower bitrate.

At last i offer my reference for you to get a satisfied video quality.
720*480(or lower),1500~2000avg bitrate,5000peak, about 10MB/Min (of course you can increase avg bitrate if it has extra available space as your project)
If your video is very long(40min,50min,even 1h+),RM is strongly recommended to remain a proper file size

btw 1,i expecting totpIII for more than 1 years,and so did most Chinese WoWers
btw 2,it couldn't be more amazing if you released totpIII HD version

[Martinfalch]

Originally Posted by Sheril

I thing your problem caused by using low average bitrate when encoding a VBR WMV video.

I have encoded my video with near all the codecs and formats.So my experience may be helpful to you.
WMV format with WMV9 codec is very ideal if your video has higher resolution, to have similar video quality in high res(1024*768 and 720P+) AVI format (with all the codecs,XVID,WMV9,etc.)takes much more space.Also,the PC hardware requirement of AVI is more rigorous than WMV when you want to render high quality video.
AVI format provides better quality in high-motion video compared to WMV(much more than Real Media),and clearer visual feeling sometimes cuz WMV seems to be covered with a thin gray mask usually.
MOV format(with MPEG4,H264 codec,etc.)has better color contrast than any other format.But takes more space in high res as well.

I suggest you to encode you video with WMV9 codec into WMV format, by using 2-pass VBR constraind bitrate(peak).
2-pass VBR did better than CBR when the movie is not short ,variable camera speed and lower bitrate.

At last i offer my reference for you to get a satisfied video quality.
720*480(or lower),1500~2000avg bitrate,5000peak, about 10MB/Min
If your video is very long(40min,50min,even 1h+),RM is strongly recommended to remain a proper file size

btw 1,i expecting totpIII for more than 1 years,and so did most Chinese WoWers
btw 2,it couldn't be more amazing if you released totpIII HD version

Cool thanks for the tip! I'm running sony vegas 6.0 so not sure if I'm able to put my settings like that, but I'll try it out!

Also, the movie will be 1hour plus I'm quite sure and it will have a bunch of shots with really fast/high motion in them, which is where I've seen AVI perform nicely so far, though I think that when the wmv VBR works, it works quite nicely for those scenes too - Anyhow, I'll test around with it a bit and try to give an update on it!

- Martin

[Sheril]

High motion need AVI,and i think Xivd is one of the best codec to encoding with,esp long video cuz it is much faster than many others,as well as its quality.

I am sure I will download totpIII even if it has 1gbytes or more,and so do all you fans
So don't let this affects your video quality ,please.

[Martinfalch]

Allrighty well I expect the movie to reach something alike 1,5 gb of size so it'll be sort of like if people go download a regular movie off the net - to be honest, if people don't feel like downloading that big a file, then they'll just have to wait 1,5-2 months until I'll release a livestream alongside Basically I agree that most people will prob download it regardsless of size, though ofc I'll try to avoid something insanely large if possible!

- Martin