general low bitrate questions + VC-1 / rmvb questions

disgust · Post by **disgust** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:00 pm

I need to encode in pretty small bitrates. I recently saw an rmvb encode that was absolutely amazing in quality for the bitrate-- ~350kbps

when I was reading about the realmedia v10 codec I also stumbled upon information on VC-1 in wmv format. how do the two compare for low bitrate compression? are there any other formats particularly suited for this sort of thing?

regarding WMV VC-1, are there any good encoding programs for using it? windows media encoder is very frustrating-- no batch processing, "wizards" to determine bitrate, etc

disgust · Post by **disgust** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:08 pm

argh, no editing posts here. frustrating.

anyway, I also wanted to mention that I'd like to avoid h264 for the same reason I want to avoid rmvb-- compatability. the users on my site almost all use windows, so WMV files would really be ideal...

Gepetto · Post by **Gepetto** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:21 pm

If you want low bitrates because of compatibility - which, I assume, means you're not too picky about quality, why don't you just upload your videos to YeTubeth?

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:59 pm

Gepetto wrote:If you want low bitrates because of compatibility - which, I assume, means you're not too picky about quality, why don't you just upload your videos to YeTubeth?

From what I gathered, it's more about trying to get the best balance of filesize vs. quality while maintaining absolute compatibility. Anyone using new versions of Windows Media Player while be capable of playing VC-1, but they probably won't be using RealPlayer due to bad history and are likely too lazy to figure out how to install the necessary playback software for H.264 (although if you're absolutely pressed on the H.264 thing you could always make it compatible with Quicktime, which people have to have if they use the iTunes Store - it won't be encoded as efficiently, and QT's decoder sucks, but it is an option for those with top-end comps).

Unfortunately I don't know anything about VC-1 encoding solutions. I'm sure there's probably something on it over at the doom9 forums, though. I do seem to remember that someone over there came out with some WMV tools a little while ago, but I don't know if it's for general muxing operations or for encoding also.