[Ben Waggoner]

It can’t mux existing assets. If you want to do AC-3 with it, you’ll export an elementary stream, and then make the ac-3 and mux with another tool.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Cleaner’s MPEG-2 has been broken since the release of 6.0. Only fix is to use a different tool.

The Compressor 2 bundled with FCP is much, much better (although Compressor 2 with FCP5 is much better than the one with FCP4).

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

I’d use MPEG-2 for this instead. Divx does a fine job of good quality at moderate data rates, but if you’re trying to get perfect quality irrespective of data rate, MPEG-2’s lower decode complexity is a big help.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Very weird.

What versions of:
Squeeze
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Services

Are you testing with?

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Basically the crop sets the source region of the source frame. Output size sets the final pixel count. And Squeeze using scaling to take the cropped source region and turn it into the output frame size. So changing how much you crop won’t change output. One complication is if you use the “maintain aspect ratio” mode, which will crop either height or width in order to avoid distorting the image area.

Squeeze has a pretty weak deinterlacer – just throwing away one field.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Well, if he’s using Compressor 2, he can use the Shake-derived optical flow resampling stuff for upsampling. They do a surprisingly good job if you don’t mind spending a few hours per minute of source to process them :). Set the resize filter to “Best (Statistical Prediction).” And if coming from interlaced source, definitely use the “Best (Motion Compensated)” deinterlacing mode.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

WMP before v9, and DirectShow/VfW implementations of that era couldn’t do non-square-pixel correctly, which is why square pixel MPEG-1 is so emphasized. Less of an issue today, although there isn’t any real reason to encode at anything other than the final frame size.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

And let me give a shout out to ProCoder as one of the highest quality and most flexible MPEG-2 tools out there. I’ve been doing the whackiest weird stuff with it lately, and the only thing it doesn’t handle is transport streams with muxed ac-3.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

I don’t answer that paritcular question in the tutorial, alas.

I believe what’s happening is that the VBR files cause some kind of analysis buffering in that tool. I don’t think it means anything practical about your file itself – it should work fine.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

AMR isn’t supported in QuickTime for Windows, darn it.

Simplest thing to do is to encode the audio on Mac.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html