.WMV vs .MPEG4 for home movie storage

[guada]

Good evening zx50,

I would advise you this formula.
It is not the most complicated, but it permits to get an excellent quality.

The necessary softwares:

GK 0.32 (Downloading Doom9.net):
- rip with dvddecrypter 3.5.1.0 (to download the new version and to install it in GK);
- DGIndex for the D2V file and the file audio original;
- Resize and AVS file with with GK.

Windows media encoder9:
- uses the utilitarian Windows Media Stream Editor to encode the audio

Nic's WMEnc v0.99 Bêta (Downloading Doom9.net):
- for the encoding of the video ( to recover the AVS of GK)

Note: As for the Xvid codec, GK will be the tool of calculation that will allow you to get the wanted final file.

To soon

[shulthise]

Windows Media:

Here's a link to the Encoder:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx

and Codecs:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/codecs.aspx

(it's better if you browse the MS website with IE. The display is better and the Menus expand)

[guada]

Good evening,

A complement of information is always a good thing.
thank you for your cooperation Shulthise.

[zx50]

Thanks shulthise.

[Achilles_wf]

Thank you all for your replies! I've run some significant tests, and my results are as follows -

.WMV files of a comparable size (considering that they also include sound) are superior to .MPEG2s for my home videos. I converted the same source both ways after carefully learning about all the encoding options (UGH!) and for the same basic file size the .WMV was better in almsot every test frame I looked at. I did this by using Media Player Classic, which lets you inspect frames by frame number and I compared the exact same frame in both versions at least 50 different ones. The .WMV file won in every case but perhaps 1 that was questionable.

I agree that soon .WMV playing DVD set top units will be out and so I may not need to re-encode. One bizarre note is that the .WMV always matched 1:1 with the frame number of the source .AVI, whereas the TMPEnc encoded .MPEG2 was off by some amount (i.e. at a given frame number I sometimes had to frame by frame advance or rewind to find the same frame as I was looking at in the original .AVI and converted .WMV file. Even if I went to a specific time in the video, this was the case.

Also, I DID use de-interlacing. It looked good to me on my computer monitor anyway. Enough people have said not to that I really need to know why I shouldn't. When I did NOT use it, the output I was looking at on my monitor was not nearly as good looking (IMHO). Now, if it is an issue with looking good on TVs then remember that not far from now all TVs will support progressive mode and so may not need the interlacing as current analog sets may. Is that the reason people are saying don't de-interlace?

Thanks!!!!

[zx50]

I think when playing these types of video on tv's they automatically get deinterlaced, whereas with your pc they don't. Unless you play them through power DVD 5 of course. I think power DVD 5 has an automatic deinterlacing feature built in.