Best program for making .wmv

[Craig Seeman]

Sorry but “best” and “not a ton of money” may be contradictory.
You could get Flip4Mac Studio Pro HD for $179 or Telestream Episode for $495, or if “batch” is truly large and must be as fast as possible Episode Engine starting at $3995.

[Jeff Gish]

Just looking to make some e-mailable/approval .wmv for the client to hang on their web. We deal mostly with quicktimes for approvals, except for this one client. Just wanted an inexpensive program so wouldn’t have to jump on the eQ to do them. Sounds like thte Flip4mac Studio HD will integrate with mpegstreamclip and compressor on our machine room mac.

Thanks!

[Craig Seeman]

Flip4Mac works with MPEGStreamClip, QuickTime Pro, Compressor.
The lease expensive version is Flip4Mac Studio at $49 but it’s just one pass presets. No control over frame size or data rate.

[Jeff Gish]

I think we might go for the Studio HD just to “future proof” a bit for when he eventually asks for some HD .wmv files.

[David Chai]

By far the best program is free, but it runs on windows.
Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 – the quality you get with this for low bitrates is unbelievable.
Tried mac version of WMV software, but in the end, Expression Encoder running on parallels is the way to go. It can save presets and batch process files, even the free version…

Try it and see for yourself…

—————–
David Chai
Writer . Director
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159

[Craig Seeman]

Expression Encoder is certainly great . . . but add the cost of Parallels and Windows 7 (you can get the OEM version though) and you have to use hard drive space for the OS, it’s not quite “free” for the Mac user.

[Bob Cole]

[David Chai] “even the free version…”

Would you recommend the paid version, and if so, for what special purposes?

[Craig Seeman]

Free version of Episode Expression does WMV.
Paid version adds H.264 .mp4 (plus lots of other features).

Note that WMP12 on Windows 7 plays H.264 (Quicktime not needed) and Silverlight can also use h.264.
If only people moved up from Windows XP and Vista to Windows 7, WMV could be left behind.

[Bob Cole]

[Craig Seeman] “Free version of Episode Expression does WMV.
Paid version adds H.264 .mp4 (plus lots of other features).”

Does the paid version do any “better” encoding to WMV?

I already have Adobe Flash on a Mac for my h.264.

Bob C

[Craig Seeman]

For WMV I believe the quality and encoding features the same for both versions.