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WMV Conversion Favorites
What’s you guys thoughts on favorite programs to create SD WMV files from FCP? It seems of late, I’ve got a bunch of clients asking for WMV files.
I’ve been using Cleaner (6.5) for quite a while with OK results. But, some guys don’t like it. I even had a 3D animator tell me to forget Cleaner and output to AVI files and use a PC’s ‘Movie-maker’ program and make them there. Actually, I did try it, and the WMV files did look better than my Cleaner’s files! But the workflow takes too long.
Not to start a flame-war on products, but, just some ideas of other programs that might be better than Cleaner.
Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
5 Replies
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The easiest product to use with FCP, and a very good one, is Flip4Mac. You can export
WMVs directly out of FCP, or any QT application. We also use Compression Master (now
Episode). Post over at the Compression Techniques forum, though, to get more advice.
Ed -
WMV? That’s sooo twentieth century! What you wnat to do is wean your clients from wmv to Flash.
Your buddy is correct, export AVI directly from FC to a networked PC. Microsoft’s Media Encoder is free and produces superb 2-pass encodes to many formats. And it will do the multibitrate intelligent streaming stuff that no Mac app can do.
Anything you do on a Macintosh to create wmv media is a hack. The codecs are all inferior to the native MS elements. I have friends who use Parallels to run Winderz on their Macs but results from the MS Encoder are mixed. Easier and cheaper to buy a used $100 PC.
We use Flip4Mac in Compressor and Cleaner 6.5 but the best results are on the PC.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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Ed,
Have you compared Episode to Cleaner? Plus’s/Minus’s?
I kinda’ want to stay in Mac for most of this conversion. I can do the transfer to PC for some really important higher-quality WMV files, but time is money and making AVI’s, copying them, moving to a different room, loading them etc is just too time consuming for most projects.
Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
The biggest difference, and really the only important one, is that Cleaner 6.5 for Mac
only makes Windows Media 7 video, which sucks! (Cleaner XL for PC does WM9) So there’s no
comparison. I have Compression Master, not the upgrade to Episode, and it creates
very good WM9, with lots of tweaks for gamma, contrast, etc.
Flip4Mac WM9 looks great too, with whatever tweaking your QT app has. If you do go over to PC, and if you can afford it, don’t use the free Windows Media Encoder. You have very little control over anything. Go with Procoder, an excellent WM9 encoder.
As for Flash 8 On2VP6, it’s a very good codec, but I still think WM9 looks better (no, I’m
sure it does), and so does Apple’s H.264.
Ed -
Ed, There’s been a free update from Compression Master to Episode for a while (unless you’re using a very old version of Compression Master). Episode WM9 is very good . . . and fast. Flip4Mac does work in Cleaner 6.5.1 though to create WM9. Flip4Mac also works in Squeeze. There are less and less reasons to do WM9 compression on a Windows box (although still a few).
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