The Cruel World of Video Editing

[Jason Dunn]

Don't you just hate it when your video editing software lets you down? I'm using the new Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0, and I'm editing the first of several Zune review videos (check Zune Thoughts on Monday at 9am eastern time). I put it all together, and in preparation for upload to YouTube, I decided to export it as a 640 x 480, 1500 kbps WMV file. I know that's more than YouTube needs, but I wanted to have a decent source file for keeping and using on other video sharing sites that offer greater resolution. I'm in a huge rush with this review, but I gritted my teeth as the mighty Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme 2.97 Ghz CPU slogged it's way through a two-pass encoding of the 10 minute footage. It took it about an hour (30 minutes for each pass), which it's incredibly frustrating - shouldn't we be at the point of real-time encoding by now?

At the end of the hour, the software happily told it was done editing and I should check out the file. Imagine my disgust when the file it exported was a 5 KB WMV file that Windows Media Player reported as corrupt. :evil: What the HELL had it been doing for the past hour? Where was the file it spent an hour rendering? I should know better than to trust Adobe software I suppose. :roll: For all of it's simplicity, I find that I can at least rely on Windows Movie Maker.

I really need to figure out a better work flow for video reviews...what a frustrating afternoon it's been!

UPDATE: I should point out that Premiere Elements 4.0 has a built-in YouTube export/upload feature, but the first few weeks it would only bomb out and not upload, so I had kind of forgotten about that feature. Well, I just tried it again on a whim, and wouldn't you know it, the problem must have been Web-based, because now it's working great. It took about 12 minutes to encode my video to Flash, and now it's up on YouTube (but hidden until Monday at 9am). Maybe there's some light at the end of this tunnel...and the lesson here is that I should just never use WMV again. It's been abandoned by Microsoft and trying to encode for it with anything other then Windows Movie Maker is just asking for trouble. :roll:

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

That is really slow. I think you're right; WMV is a bit of a turkey format nowadays. I've been transcoding small funny clips to my media players, in XviD and h.264, as well as ripping DVDs to XviD, and it's about 1:2 at the slowest. Some of them go as fast as 2:1, but I guess they're smaller files.

[Jason Dunn]

I think you're right; WMV is a bit of a turkey format nowadays. I've been transcoding small funny clips to my media players, in XviD and h.264

Yeah, encoding to WMV is sort of "legacy thinking" for me - it was my format of choice for years because all my Microsoft-ecosystem devices used it. There are all sorts of great software choices out there for ripping and encoding video, and WMV is usually missing or dysfunctional. h.264 and Xvid/Divx is really where there's solid support...most of the time. I'm shocked that Premiere Elements doesn't have h.264 export support - unless you do it has a Quicktime file. I want a simple .mp4 export...bizarre that it's missing.

[BugDude10]

Jason: I think this is the second or third time you've mentioned .WMV being "abandoned" by Microsoft -- is this some formal development from MS, or is it just your interpretation that crappy support from MS means that they've given up on it? (It seems like the apps I use still have .WMV as an option, but they're not this year's versions, so I might be a bit behind the curve on this development.)

[DWAnderson]

Jason: I think this is the second or third time you've mentioned .WMV being "abandoned" by Microsoft -- is this some formal development from MS, or is it just your interpretation that crappy support from MS means that they've given up on it? (It seems like the apps I use still have .WMV as an option, but they're not this year's versions, so I might be a bit behind the curve on this development.)

I was wondering about this as well.

[mrozema]

Ulead VideoStudio 10 (I know v11 is available now) has been my friend for, close to, the last year. I've never come across a video encoding session that's gone wrong, without user error involved somehow. Its simple to use and the encoding options are very customizable.

Jason: Were you saying that Premier Elements encodes straight to FLV for upload to YouTube?

[Jason Dunn]

Jason: I think this is the second or third time you've mentioned .WMV being "abandoned" by Microsoft -- is this some formal development from MS, or is it just your interpretation that crappy support from MS means that they've given up on it?

Just looking at history. The 9 Series products came out in 2002 - that's five years ago. They haven't released anything new since then - the professional encoder doesn't really count because it's more focused on VC1 - and they've let for WMV format languish. Formats like DivX and Xvid have flourished, h.264 is now mainstream. There are all sorts of fantastic tools for encoding content to those formats - WMV encoding is always an afterthought. Sure, there are some dedicated tools for Pocket PCs created by Pocket PC developers, but look at all the mainstrem rippers out there: CloneDVD Mobile, Intervideo iVideoToGo, Nero Recode - most lack WMV encoding support, or if they have it, it's shoddy at best.

You wouldn't believe the lengths I've gone to over the years to encourage developers to add WMV support - and I've heard story after story about how hard it is to implement WMV support because the Windows Media Enoder is such a buggy piece of software. Where's the wicked easy drag and drop transcoding tool like Divx has?

Where are the useful profiles for modern devices (Zune, Windows Mobile 6 smartphones, etc.) in Windows Movie Maker to make it easier for us to output compliant WMV files? Why isn't there a way to specify a custom WMV export profile in Windows Movie Maker? I've tried creating custom profiles in Windows Media Encoder and exporting them, but it's an exercise in frustration every time. I've tried using my contacts at Microsoft to get some movement on this issue, but it's like a ghost town over there - their digital media devision has all but vanished as far as I can tell.

All the momentum is behind h.264 and Divx/Xvid. The devices, the software tools, the players, etc. WMV is an afterthought, and it's all because Microsoft stopped caring about the format. Even the programs that do come with WMV export support are using profiles from 2002.

This is a great article from last year (http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/02/the-clicker-dear-microsoft-help-me-help-you/) that sums up my feelings nicely. Since the author wrote that in 2006, Microsoft has added h.264 support to the Xbox, and Divx is rumoured to be coming next. The Zune now supports h.264 and MPEG4 natively. The writing is on the wall: these teams know that WMV support isn't enough, because it's just too damn hard to get content, and find content, in WMV format.

WMV as a codec is solid. The support from Microsoft for it is not. I've given up on WMV.

[Jason Dunn]

I've taken my long post and made it into a point for front-page discussion, so if you want to discuss the state of WMV, put your responses there later today...

[Jason Dunn]

Ulead VideoStudio 10 (I know v11 is available now) has been my friend for, close to, the last year.

Yeah, I was a VideoStudio user for a while, but I felt it was a bit too simple for my tastes so I've moved on. Glad to hear it works for you though. :-)

Jason: Were you saying that Premier Elements encodes straight to FLV for upload to YouTube?

Yes, it has a YouTube export built right into the program: you enter in your YouTube username and password, the video metadata, then it encodes and uploads right from within the program. It was a real life-saver for the Zune videos!

[Jake Ludington]

the professional encoder doesn't really count because it's more focused on VC1 - and they've let for WMV format languish. Formats like DivX and Xvid have flourished, h.264 is now mainstream. There are all sorts of fantastic tools for encoding content to those formats - WMV encoding is always an afterthought.

This is not entirely accurate. :) If you upgraded your computer to WMP 11, you've got the WVC1 DMO on your PC, which means you can create new VC-1 compliant WMVs, which would be the direct competitor to H.264. VC-1 is the evolutionary step from the WMV format with FourCC code WMV3. Microsoft isn't doing any new work on the free Encoder, but there is an SDK for building encoder products that create WMV files that's constantly under development. Whether software companies like Adobe, etc are implementing that is another story.

[lingenfr]

I don't do much in windows land, but some time ago I purchased video redo plus. I used it for basic editing and encoding and it worked like a champ for a reasonable price.