WM9 on PPC: is it possible?

[syphix]

I've read quite a bit about Divx vs. the new Windows Media 9, and it seems to point at WM9 as having equal quality video at lower bitrates (i.e., smaller files). So I've downloaded the WM9 encoder, but suddenly think, "Can Pocket PC 2002 even play WM9 files?" So....can it? If not, ss there a codec available for it (didn't see one on Microsoft's site, but didn't look too closely)? A seperate player? Should I even bother?

[guinness]

It can, but I wouldn't bother. I still get better framerates with Divx encoding than with WMV. Besides crashing 95% of the time when I try and open a file, WME 9 will encode audio at 48 kHz with its default Pocket PC profile, which is goofy because PPC's can't play anything above 44.1 kHz. WME is better than Movie Maker, but most of the time it just crashes upon opening the program, so I've stuck with Virtual Dub and FlaskMPEG.

[KiLLiN-TiMe]

You can convert video with it.
Choose to convert a file and after you choose a source and a destination it will ask you for the distrubution format... choose pocket pc.
Next it will give you the encoding options. leave the video alone (unless you got something in wide screen) but change the sound to Voice Quality. (the pocket pc wont do the cd quality setting because it is 48000 khz and the most the ppc will do is 44000 khz ... but the voice setting sounds ok.)
Give it a Title... this is what you will see in the info bar when you play the movie.
Click finish which will close the wizard. now up at the top you'll see a green button that says "start encoding". Click it and wait ....
It will take a couple of hours with a fast machine for a two and a half hour movie. but when it is done you will have a full length movie that should fit on a 256 mb flash card. 8)

[KiLLiN-TiMe]

It can, but I wouldn't bother. I still get better framerates with Divx encoding than with WMV. Besides crashing 95% of the time when I try and open a file, WME 9 will encode audio at 48 kHz with its default Pocket PC profile, which is goofy because PPC's can't play anything above 44.1 kHz. WME is better than Movie Maker, but most of the time it just crashes upon opening the program, so I've stuck with Virtual Dub and FlaskMPEG.

Mine NEVER crashes... Maybe something with your system... or mine :)

[guinness]

It can, but I wouldn't bother. I still get better framerates with Divx encoding than with WMV. Besides crashing 95% of the time when I try and open a file, WME 9 will encode audio at 48 kHz with its default Pocket PC profile, which is goofy because PPC's can't play anything above 44.1 kHz. WME is better than Movie Maker, but most of the time it just crashes upon opening the program, so I've stuck with Virtual Dub and FlaskMPEG.

Mine NEVER crashes... Maybe something with your system... or mine :)

It's probably my PC, but it ticks me off because MS apps crash all the time, and I've just reformated a month or 2 ago. WME, WMM, Outlook XP, WMP 9, IE 6, doesn't matter, randomly crash. Strange thing though. is that just "upgraded" to Office 2003 Beta 2 and that's more stable that Office XP was. Most of my 3rd party apps are rock solid though.

I'm running XP, btw, with 768 MB of ram, shouldn't run out memory and the ram can't be bad because other apps run fine.

[gwinter]

PPC player does not currently support Windows Media 9 Video codec. It does, however, support Windows Media 9 Audio codec. The PPC profile in Media Encoder uses version 8 of the video codec.

I have never tried the version 9 video codec, but I've heard of some positive things about it. Perhaps it does shine at encoding material for HD stream. Interesting that T2: Extreme Edition (http://dvd.ign.com/articles/393/393023p1.html?fromint=1) will include HD version of the film encoded with Windows Media 9.