Neurosurgery video

[Charles Simonson]

Windows Media at this time is only a 4:2:0 codec. This is one of the main reasons it is not generally suitable for editing. There is talk about releasing a better sampling version for a later implementation of VC-1, but nothing is publicly available yet.

Per your capturing, if you are shooting on DVCPRO HD, then the best option would be to keep it DVCPRO HD (if your DVCPRO HD setup has firewire connection capabilities). No reason to convert it from DVCPRO HD to something else if you are using a Final Cut system workflow. The only benefit to capturing to PhotoJPEG (or MJPEG is shooting interlaced) is if you need to capture with an SDI card, which would normally require very large storage disks for capturing as uncompressed files.

[Ed Dooley]

This from the Microsoft site:
https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/UnderstandingHDFormats.aspx

4:1:1. Y is sampled at every pixel, but the Cb and Cr color information is only sampled at every fourth pixel, saving even more bandwidth. This sampling rate is used in consumer DV cameras and is currently the default sampling rate for the interlaced mode in the Microsoft Windows Media

[Charles Simonson]

Hmmm. Looks like they haven’t updated that page in a long while (page has a date of Jan 2004, well before the final VC-1 spec was ever submitted). It is true that for MS’ “original” spec of VC-1 (WMVA), 4:1:1 was the default for interlaced encoding. (*Note that WMVA is no longer supported, but if you have just Windows Media Encoder installed on your system, then you probably have some version of the WMVA encoder installed.) Windows Media 9 Standard (WMV3) doesn’t even support an interlaced mode, and thus all it ever supported is 4:2:0. The SMPTE “approved” spec of VC-1 only supports 4:2:0 as well, in both interlaced and progressive modes.

I know this because myself and my company is heavily invested in the development of VC-1 encoders in both the post production and broadcast spaces. Obviously for our broadcast products, understanding and getting interlaced encoding right is paramount. While I could certainly see benefits to using a 4:1:1 color space over 4:2:0 for interlaced encoding, this just isn’t possible as of today.

[Ed Dooley]

Leave it to Microsoft to leave an old document on their site (and for me not
to catch it). 🙂
Ed