Digital Workshop

I have a bit of a strange one here...

I have a pub that plays an mpeg2 video file at 1024x768 resolution -
The Windows XP machine that I am trying to play it back on would not play it via the pub or via Windows Media Player
I downloaded and installed "Stinkys Mpeg2 codec" and it plays ok now in Windows Media Player - but still no joy from the Opus Pub
I have the video set up to play "on top"

Any suggestions?

Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

The playback depends as much on the encoding codec as the decoding one. The best solution for MPEG1&2 is a commercial encoder such as Main Concepts. With all the video encoding we done, having MPEG2 under XP is generally something we avoid as getting it to work always seemed to affect playback of other formats - named MPEG1.

Can you not use something like MPEG4 and require the end user to have Quicktime alternative installed?

See our scribbles they might help.

http://www.live.interaktiv.co.uk/index. ... Itemid=166

Mack

Hi Mack,

I did a search and found your post re MPEG 4 and looked into this - I have created the video in Premiere CS4 and tried to follow your instructions for producing the MPeg 4 file in Adobe Media Encoder - but I dont seem to be able to produce it at 1024 x 768 resolution.

Pete

Hi Pete,

I did try AME on several projects but never got decent results. It was also very slow and prone to crashing on v4 with limited configuration options.

Although it is possible to use software that produces MPEG4-Part10 (H2.64 / AVC), you'll probably need to set the profile to basic which might limit the quality of your result. It's better if you can use software that allows for the creation of MPEG4-Part2 (H2.63 / DivX) as this will allow you to use the Advanced Simple Profile which will produce a high quality result but does strain the machine less and thus can be played back smoothly in Opus even under an average spec machine.

I should also throw into the pot that Microsoft's own WMV codec will work under XP and produce excellent results. You can get their free Expression Encoder.

Hope it helps.

Mack

Hi Mac,

Thanks for your response - greatly appreciated.

For now - I have (as you pointed out) managed to produce the videos as WMV files and the results are very good.
But for my own sanity - I would like to know how to produce MPeg4 files too.
Even the Mpeg4 files that I produced at 720x576 with AME were not very good.

So...

Can you recommend an alternative tool to AME then?


Warm regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

I'm always a little skeptical about recommending software but the following programs will produce decent usable outputs and were tested on clean XP machines:

For WMP - Microsoft Expression Encoder

For MPEG4- PartII - Super for use with Quicktime / Alternative

Normal caveats - don't install and test video software on a developer's machine. This sort of software has a bad habit of overwriting codecs and affecting playback of existing av types.

Mack

Hi Mack,

Thanks for the recommendation - Not sure what SUPER is?
Did a very quick search but could not see anything immediately that looked like what I need.

However, for anyone going through similar issues:

Here are my findings to date:
Using Adobe Media Encoder (AME)

I got very good results at the resolution that I needed by outputting as WMV files

MPEG4 - not very impressed with AME's efforts - particularly as it does not seem to allow changes to frame rate/frame size.

MPEG2 - looked great but would not play back in Opus

MPEG1 - would play back but the quality was poor and when I increased the data rate - slowed to a crawl

SO it looks like WMV is king now???

Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

Super is a geeks tool - http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

As for WMV being king, there are two holes in that argument - it doesn't render in Opus (if I remember correctly) and I think with W7, MPEG4 has become a default codec - though I must add that later to my check list of to do to's to confirm which versions support that theory.

I won't deny, WMV is much, much better than it used to be, but you have to remember that XP users must upgrade Media Player to take advantage of newer, better codecs. Also, I'm told by various video techs, that the Free Expression Encoder produces superior results - though I'll have to accept their word on that one - it's another Flac vs MP3 V0 argument for me!

Regards,

Mack

Hi Mack,

Fair comments - as always

Thanks

Pete