• Compression Techniques

  windows media file and graphic text looks bad

  Posted by Chris Wasmer on November 12, 2009 at 2:02 pm

  Can anyone recommend a program to that can make a windows media file for the web that does not leave graphic-text looking pixelated/blockey/bleedy. I tried using Flip4Mac and Sorenson Squeeze, but the results were very bad. An H.264 Quicktime of the same material looks darn good. Original sequence is HD 720 24p from FCP. I am trying to make a small windows media file — 400 x 225– that keeps the original frame rate. At this point any data rate is OK. I just want something that looks good. The text is both red and black over a 90% white screen. The black text looks OK, but the red text looks real bad. Especially the letter “M.” I tried blurring, changing colors, even using the deinterlace filter in FCP. But every time I make a windows media file, the text still looks awful. ???

  Chris Blair replied 16 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Rich Rubasch

  November 13, 2009 at 2:10 am

  I only use a PC to do critical WMV encoding tasks, however I have recently installed Parallels and Windows XP and now I can drag and drop clips to Windows on my Mac and encode locally.

  There is not a great Mac option to do what you need…maybe Episode with some tweaking, but only Windows encoder for PC can do it great.

  Rich Rubasch
  Tilt Media Inc.
  Video Production and Post
  Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
• 

  Chris Wasmer

  November 13, 2009 at 4:24 am

  Thanks for your response.
  I tried the demo for Episode, but it’s not good enough.
  What program do you use with Windows?
• 

  Chris Blair

  November 17, 2009 at 1:56 am

  Windows Media Encoder is free and capable, but it has a quirky interface. MediaCoder is also free and capable but also has a quirky interface. Of course they only work on Windows.

  Windows media 9 uses an implementation of the VC1 codec, which is widely considered to be as good as H264 in terms of file size/quality. Many Blu-ray discs use VC1 for compression.

  We’ve found that when using the correct settings, windows media files compare very favorably to H264 encoded files. Of course, just as Quicktime is designed for Mac, windows media is designed to playback on Windows, and the media player you use to play the files can make a huge difference in how the encoded file looks on-screen. Use VLC to play a wmv and it’ll look completely different than it does on Windows Media Play 11. For that matter, it’ll look completely different if you play it on Windows Media Player 9 compared to WMP 11.

  Chris Blair
  Magnetic Image, Inc.
  Evansville, IN
  http://www.videomi.com

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