Whoa boy, this is a long one. I hope you'll take the time to read it all Ben. ;-)
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
Hey, Ben Waggoner here (Technology Evangelist on the Microsoft codec team).
Thanks for stopping in - sorry it's taken me a few days to get to this thread. I certainly wasn't expecting to have you stop in, but I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue with you. I appreciate your input, but I don't think it invalidates my point - if anything, it only reinforces it. Let me explain...
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
On the authoring side, there's been
Format SDK 9.5 (2004)
Format SDK 11 (2006)
VC-1 Encoder SDK (2007)
Expression Encoder (2007)
All of which include a variety of quality and speed improvements that are backwards compatible with WMP 9 or later.
I'm a consumer. I'm a digital media enthusiast that has, for years, looked to Microsoft to provide easy and quick ways to get my content into WMV format. I'm not an encoding expert in terms of being able to use complex tools that expect me to understand anything more than the basics of bit rate and resolution. All the things you've listed are professional-level, or developer-focused improvements. I can't use SDKs. I can't use the Expression Encoder - I could stumble my way around Windows Media Encoder 9 and get the basics done with it, but I'm sure you'd agree it's anything but simple or straight-forward for anyone that isn't an encoding expert. To this day I still can't figure out how to create and export custom encoding profiles that I can use inside Windows Media Player - it's just not an easy process.
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
There's a new version of Windows Media Services coming in Server 2008 (currently in RC).
Again, no improvements for consumers in terms of getting their content into WMV.
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
On the client side, we've had
Windows Media Player 10
Windows Media Player 11
Zune Player (two versions)
Several Media Center updates
New Media Center extenders
Great WMV support in Xbox and Zune
Silverlight
You bet - lots of great devices that play back WMV. But that doesn't address the root problem of the consumer getting their content into WMV easily. That's really the root of my complaint.
Where's the WMV equivalent of the Divx Converter? Where's the tool that allows me to convert my video to WMV quickly and easily? Or, if you want to use Windows Movie Maker as the sole path for WMV creation, where are the profiles to support the Zune? Or Pocket PCs? Or Smartphones? A 640 x 480, 1 mbps profile just doesn't cut it in terms of covering portable devices. Relying on Windows Media Player 11 to transcode everything is just sloppy and a time suck. Windows Movie Maker could have been a great conduit for content transcoding if it had a dynamic, Internet-updatable profile function. New device comes out? Bam: release a profile so people can create WMV content for it. Instead we had a static list for years. Yes, a determined person could hunt down a custom profile created by someone else online and use if if they were technical enough, but it's not easy or intuitive.
Why doesn't Windows Movie Maker support custom encoding settings where I as a user can pick the resolution, aspect ration, and bit rate for my video? If I could do that some of this wouldn't be an issue for myself or for others. Was this kept out to cripple the product as a concession to third party video editing software developers?
Why doesn't it support encoding VOB files? Why did it take so many years to get DVR-MS support, and even now that's only in Vista? I will say that the addition of 1080p profiles for the Xbox is a welcome improvement, so clearly someone is partially paying attention to this scenario (though not enough IMO).
Let's face facts: DVD ripping software is incredibly popular. Legal or not, DVDs are a source of a great deal of content for consumers. When I travel, I don't lug 10 DVDs with me, I rip them and carry the files on my laptop hard drive. I'd never expect Microsoft to release a DVD ripper of their own, but why not support encoding of non-encrypted VOB files? Because Microsoft ignored this market, and never pursued the companies making DVD ripping software, the bulk of the products out there are focused on ripping to h.264 and Divx. I've practically begged the people at Slysoft, the ones who make the superb CloneDVD Mobile, to add WMV support - they've finally added it as an "experimental output". They, and developers of other applications, have told me that the WMV encoder is buggy and they've had real struggles getting WMV output into their products. Look at products from Pinnacle, Intervideo, and others: WMV is either missing or a second-class citizen.
h.264 and Divx have all the momentum because Microsoft abandoned WMV in the consumer space. The battle is over: the Xbox and Zune teams realize this, which is why they've added native h.264 and MPEG4 support to their products, and Divx is rumoured to be on the way. WMV has lots of promise, but it was badly mishandled. I can't tell you how many times over the years I've tried to use my MVP contacts to encourage various groups within Microsoft to make WMV support more of a priority. It never went anywhere because all the people I talked to seemed more focused on media encoding professionals then Joe Consumer.
Maybe that's what Microsoft wants: Joe Consumer using h.264, while Microsoft focuses on HD-DVD royalties from VC1. That seems to be the case to me...
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
We've been supporting 3rd parties like Packet Video and Kinoma on geting WMV playback on non-Windows Mobile devices, and Telestream for Flip4Mac.
Some of those Flip4Mac tools look better for consumer-level WMV encoding than what Microsoft offers it's own customers. Seems kind of sad, no?
I'm a consumer. I'm a digital media enthusiast that has, for years, looked to Microsoft to provide easy and quick ways to get my content into WMV format. I'm not an encoding expert in terms of being able to use complex tools that expect me to understand anything more than the basics of bit rate and resolution. All the things you've listed are professional-level, or developer-focused improvements. I can't use SDKs. I can't use the Expression Encoder - I could stumble my way around Windows Media Encoder 9 and get the basics done with it, but I'm sure you'd agree it's anything but simple or straight-forward for anyone that isn't an encoding expert. To this day I still can't figure out how to create and export custom encoding profiles that I can use inside Windows Media Player - it's just not an easy process.
...
Where's the WMV equivalent of the Divx Converter? Where's the tool that allows me to convert my video to WMV quickly and easily? Or, if you want to use Windows Movie Maker as the sole path for WMV creation, where are the profiles to support the Zune? Or Pocket PCs? Or Smartphones? A 640 x 480, 1 mbps profile just doesn't cut it in terms of covering portable devices. Relying on Windows Media Player 11 to transcode everything is just sloppy and a time suck. Windows Movie Maker could have been a great conduit for content transcoding if it had a dynamic, Internet-updatable profile function. New device comes out? Bam: release a profile so people can create WMV content for it. Instead we had a static list for years. Yes, a determined person could hunt down a custom profile created by someone else online and use if if they were technical enough, but it's not easy or intuitive.
Ah, I see what you're getting at. We've got a good story for professionals (SDKs and Expression Encdoer) and automatic consumer scenarios (automatic transcoded tuned to a device), but you're really looking at something more "prosumer."
We don't really make anything like that, other than (arguably) Windows Media Encoder. Of course, since the SDK is available, you get 3rd parties making tools like TMPGEnc, Squeeze, ProCoder Express, and others targeting other scenarios.
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Why doesn't Windows Movie Maker support custom encoding settings where I as a user can pick the resolution, aspect ration, and bit rate for my video? If I could do that some of this wouldn't be an issue for myself or for others. Was this kept out to cripple the product as a concession to third party video editing software developers?
Nope, just trying to keep things simple for consumers. We give the SDK out for free, so we don't need to enforce any tiering on the industry.
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Why doesn't it support encoding VOB files? Why did it take so many years to get DVR-MS support, and even now that's only in Vista? I will say that the addition of 1080p profiles for the Xbox is a welcome improvement, so clearly someone is partially paying attention to this scenario (though not enough IMO).
There are lots of tools that can do .VOB or anything to WMV I see discussed on Doom9. Given Windows doesn't have a built in Dolby Digital decoder, it's not something we could do in a free product.
Lots of companies are legitmately using .VOB as souce for WMV encoding, like TotalVid. They're using Canopus ProCoder last I checked.
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H.264 and Divx have all the momentum because Microsoft abandoned WMV in the consumer space. The battle is over: the Xbox and Zune teams realize this, which is why they've added native h.264 and MPEG4 support to their products, and Divx is rumoured to be on the way. WMV has lots of promise, but it was badly mishandled. I can't tell you how many times over the years I've tried to use my MVP contacts to encourage various groups within Microsoft to make WMV support more of a priority. It never went anywhere because all the people I talked to seemed more focused on media encoding professionals then Joe Consumer.
Well, bear in mind that we're not really against MPEG-4 (by "Divx" I assume you mean MPEG-4 part 2 in a .avi, not the actual .divx files) at Microsoft. WMV is a good format for a lot of stuff, but I don't consider adding support for those codecs to Xbox some kind of defeat.
The real sweet spots for Windows Media are for scenarios that go beyond just a file container for local playback. Stuff like streaming, real-time encoding, DRM, multicast for corporate use. Local file playback that's basically a more efficient version of MPEG-1 from a feature perspective doesn't really need Windows Media.
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Maybe that's what Microsoft wants: Joe Consumer using h.264, while Microsoft focuses on HD-DVD royalties from VC1. That seems to be the case to me...
Well, we're part of the H.264 patent pool as well .
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Some of those Flip4Mac tools look better for consumer-level WMV encoding than what Microsoft offers it's own customers. Seems kind of sad, no?
We licenced source code to Telestream for Flip4Mac, distribute the software, and work with them on it in other ways, so I think of it as part of our efforts. I agree it's a nice way to integrate compression into the QuickTime API.
Ah, I see what you're getting at. We've got a good story for professionals (SDKs and Expression Encdoer) and automatic consumer scenarios (automatic transcoded tuned to a device), but you're really looking at something more "prosumer."
Yes, I think professionals are in a good place with WMV - the Expression stuff is fantastic, Silverlight is impressive. The consumer scenario though is weak, and I'd argue that what you consider to be "prosumer" (people wanting to have control over their video encoding) is really still a consumer level scenario. Prosumers are probably video editing hobbyists making some money here or there, and working with someone else's content - consumers are working with their own content and simply trying to get it onto their devices.
What's the last significant investment the Windows Media team made in the consumer space? Windows Movie Maker for Vista is all that comes to mind. As I pointed out last message, it's extremely limited (read: crippled) when it comes to output profiles.
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
We don't really make anything like that, other than (arguably) Windows Media Encoder. Of course, since the SDK is available, you get 3rd parties making tools like TMPGEnc, Squeeze, ProCoder Express, and others targeting other scenarios.
Squeeze: $499 USD
ProCoder Express: no longer offered, ProCoder 3 is $499 USD
TMPGEnc: $99 USD
Other than TMPGEnc, I'd say those other examples fall firmly into the professional category. I remember one of the Zune team members saying that TMPGEnc was the solution to the fact that the Zune software wouldn't transcode DVR-MS files, AVI files, etc. - and most of the community wasn't very supportive of having to go out and spend $99 to get basic functionality they had with Windows Media Player 11 and a PlaysForSure device. Yet if Windows Movie Maker had a Zune output profile, many of these concerns would have been fixed.
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
Nope, just trying to keep things simple for consumers.
I'm all for keeping things simple, but not when it's used as an excuse for not giving consumers the features they need. The first-gen Zune was a perfect example of this: it only supported WMV natively on the device, so consumers needed to get their content into that format - yes, the software would transcode MPEG4 content to WMV, but that's slow and the quality usually sucks.
There's more Divx (in AVI container form) than pretty much anything else, yet the Zune software wouldn't work with AVI content (unless you did a registry hack). So you had this device (the Zune) ready and willing for WMV content, yet no Windows Movie Maker profile to output that content in. Telling consumers to spend an hour outputting a 640 x 480 1 mbps file then waiting another hour for the Zune software to convert it to 320 x 240. That's just a bad user experience when all the person wants is to take their content and go.
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Originally Posted by benwaggoner
Well, bear in mind that we're not really against MPEG-4 (by "Divx" I assume you mean MPEG-4 part 2 in a .avi, not the actual .divx files) at Microsoft. WMV is a good format for a lot of stuff, but I don't consider adding support for those codecs to Xbox some kind of defeat.
Well, it's either a begrudging acceptance or a complete lack of awareness about what types of formats consumers are using now. Either way it's taken a very long time, and multiple generations (in the case of the Zune) to acknowledge that WMV support simply isn't enough.
As you can tell, there's a common theme in my posts: I believe that many consumers use Windows Movie Maker as a transcoding engine because it's free, and included in Windows by default. I find myself using it quite a bit now under Vista because it's fast and easy. But the brick wall that people owning Zunes, Windows Mobile devices, and many other WMV-capable devices run smack into is the fact that there's no profile support for their devices.
I'm convinced that if Windows Movie Maker had better profile support for mobile devices, and custom profile support, it would alleviate many of these frustrations for myself and the communities I represent (both here and at Zune Thoughts). It would be a great win for Microsoft to be able to say "Sure, if you want to create content for our devices, use Windows Movie Maker. Problem solved." This party tools could handle the DVD ripping, VOB importing, Flash video importing, etc.
So who on the Windows Movie Maker team makes this call? Who's the person that controls which profiles are included, and the process to add new ones? Can we take this offline and get a conference call set up? I'd really like to not have this same conversation two years from now. ;-)
I forgot to add another profile that Windows Movie Maker needs: a YouTube export profile. Yes, a knowledgeable user could specify the file size as 99 MB and the software will take care of the rest, but many YouTube users don't understand the limitations that YouTube has. The competition here is the Mac, and the best out-of-box solution is who wins - Microsoft has stepped up with Vista and Live services, trying to compete with iLife, but the apps have to continue to evolve and improve - and the customer won't wait five years for you to release a new OS just to get a new version of the app.
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