EncodeHD – Another video conversion utility
EncodeHD is another video conversion tool that you might consider for your video needs. It is basically a simple front-end interface for FFMPEG, which does all the heavy lifting for the conversion process. You simply drag your source files into the main area of EncodeHD, select the output type, and click the “Start” button. Very easy to use, however, you don’t have a lot of control over the settings used (unless you already know the FFMPEG command line flags, in which case you can enter them under the “Advanced” screen).
Here’s a list of target devices that EncodeHD can create videos for. As you can see, there is an entry for “Zune” and “Zune HD”.
As a test, I converted a DVR-MS file (which is basically a container for MPEG2 video and audio) to a Zune HD output, and EncodeHD generated an MP4 file. So, EncodeHD only creates Mp4 formatted video files, not WMV files for the Zune. When I check the details of the generated MP4 file, I see the following attributes:
The video bit rate seems pretty high (which is good) but the frame rate doesn’t seem correct to me. In any case, this might be a good simple tool if you want to do some quick conversions. EncodeHD also uses other freeware utilities such as AtomicParsley to embed some meta data tags (e.g., video title, description, etc.), however, none of those tags are read by the Zune media player.
Microsoft Expressions Encoder 3
Microsoft Windows Encoder 9 has been my workhorse for encoding videos to WMV format for my Zune. It has a graphical user interface as well as a command line interface (which I mainly use), along with its own SDK that can be tied into custom applications (like the VisualBasic code, Media Encoder Batch). Unfortunately, in 2003 Microsoft decided to stop development to WME9 in favor of its replacement, Microsoft Expressions Encoder.
This evening, I decided to check out Expressions just to see how it compared to its predecessor, WME9, particularly for creating high-quality WMV files for the Zune HD. As it turns out, Expressions is designed to generate such files for the Zune HD. Below is what the main interface looks like with Expressions. It is actually a much cleaner GUI than WME9, in my opinion.
Among the various predefined output settings, was one for the Zune HD and another for the Zune HD playback on a AV-Dock. The settings were defined as:
One nice thing, is that Expressions can convert native WTV files (recordings generated by Windows 7 Media Center) which WME9 could not do. Also, you can use the Expressions to cut out commercial segments manually if you wish before the conversion process. As a test, I tried converting a WTV file which was in standard 4:3 format, and the default Zune HD conversion settings generated a 480×272 WMV file with black bars to the sides of the video (preserving the aspect ratio of the original 4:3 source). The quality of the playback was very good.
The only bad thing I see with Expressions, is that the version 3 does not have a command line interface. So you either use the GUI they provide or write your own code to interface with the Expressions SDK.
Most importantly, Microsoft Expressions Encoder 3 is free. You can download it from this link and run it on your Vista or Windows 7 system.
So if you want to use Microsoft’s latest free encoder software to create WMV files for your Zune, here it is.
Perfecting video conversion for the Zune HD
For you diehard videophiles who want the perfect video conversion, I think I’ve finally perfected the process of taking TV show recordings and turning them into WMV files for the Zune HD. There were lots of challenges to getting this to work, especially finding the right combination of tools and settings.
Now, the objective is to convert a TV show recording (WTV file from Windows 7 Media Center) into a WMV formatted file for my Zune HD media player. My TV recordings are in standard NTSC format (4:3 ratio) which is a squarish picture. The Zune HD has a wide-screen display (16:9) so I need to configure the conversion to handle this situation. One option is to stretch the picture side ways to fill the screen, but then the displayed image is distorted. Another option is to crop off part of the top and bottom of the TV image to create the 16:9 size. For my process, I decided to do the cropping option.
So, my first step is to convert the WTV file to the older DVR-MS format because most of the available conversion tools are compatible with DVR-MS and not WTV format. This is done by using a conversion program (wtvconverter.exe) that is supplied with Windows 7. Note, that the TV video resolution is 720×480, so we need to do some cropping to get it down to the 16:9 ratio size.
For this operation, I chose to use a freeware program called FFMPEG which is designed for video conversions. My goal in this step is to crop off 38 pixels from the top and bottom of the image, and then shrink the image down to a final size of 480×272 (which is the Zune HD screen resolution). I also want to convert the DVR-MS file to MPEG2 format at the same time. To do all this, I use the following command line with FFMPEG: Read the rest of this entry »
My video conversion process
On a daily basis I record TV shows with my TV Tuner card and convert them for viewing on my Zune HD media player, so I automate the process using a wonderful utility called DVRMSToolbox (DTB). In conjunction with another great tool called ShowAnalyzer, I have a process of scanning through a recorded TV show file to find commercials, strip them out, and then convert the edited video file to WMV format for my Zune HD. All completely automatic.
Now, with a video conversion there’s lot of different converters, options, and settings you can use. For the Zune, I have the option of generating WMV or MP4 formatted files. I prefer using the WMV format, since it is designed to run on Microsoft OS devices. The MP4 is equally good, and is more universal as it can run on the Zune as well as the Apple iPod and other video media players. I opted for WMV because I can add more metadata (e.g., TV Show title, category, etc) than with the MP4 format.
With regards to playback quality, I’m not sure which of the formats (WMV or MP4) is better. That is one thing that I want to investigate in the future. Along with picking a format, there is a multitude of settings you can use. Video bit rate, Audio bit rate and frequency, frames per second, smoothness settings, keyframe rate, etc. are some of the different settings you can use. Each setting will affect the video playback quality as well as the final file size, so there’s a trade off. If you don’t care about file size, you can jack up the settings for the best quality. If generating a smaller file size is important, then you need to dial down these settings.
Being the stickler that I am with my videos, I’ll sacrifice having a larger file size if I can get better video quality. It really annoys me when the video I’m watching has a lot of video tearing, pixelation, bluriness, or jumpiness. I want a really smooth and high quality video for playback on my Zune. Read the rest of this entry »
Zune Software 3.0 will convert WTV files automatically
One thing that I learned with all the video conversion investigation I did today, is that the latest Zune Software (3.0) will automatically convert your recorded TV shows to Zune format for your Zune. What you need to do, is add your “Recorded TV” show folder as a monitored video folder in the Zune Software settings. Then, whenever a WTV file (new format for Windows 7) is found in that folder the Zune Software will automatically begin the conversion and syncing process. Easy!
It actually converts the video in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you have two or four processors in your machine. I know that some users in the past have complained that the background conversion program (ZuneEnc.exe) is running with a very low priority (and thus runs slow), I didn’t see much slowness on my system. Of course, I have an Intel Quad Core processor so that may be the reason. So if you aren’t in a big hurry and do most of your TV show conversions over night, that may be the easiest way to get your TV shows on your Zune.
Now, if you want to have the commercials stripped from your shows before converting and syncing to your Zune, you’ll need to use a different process (like I do, using DVRMSToolbox) and some procedure scripts.
Video conversion issue just a glitch?
I’ve spend all day today working on this out-of-sync audio issue I have with my video conversion process. I explained the issue in my previous posting, which I find strange since I was very careful to not install any codec packs. After my fresh install of the Windows 7 OS, I installed DVRMSToolBox along with Windows Media Encoder 9 and its SDK. It might be that WME9 could have installed some DirectShow Filter or codec that is causing this problem.
So, I ran several tests today converting my 1-hour WTV file (Stargate Atlantis TV Show) with different settings. Ultimately, here was my final solution:
- Installed the freeware called InstalledCodec which I used to display all the audio and video codecs as well as DirectShow filters installed on my Windows 7 machine.
- Using InstalledCodec, I sorted the list of items by installed date, and then disabled all of them from working. Since I very recently install the Win 7 OS on my system, it was easy for me to identify the new codecs and filters that were installed after the OS by date.
- I then ran my various conversion tests, using many different methods.
Now, under these conditions I should have only the basic codecs, splitters, encoders, filters, etc. working on my system. Essentially, everything that was supplied by Windows 7 (and any downloaded updates). So after running my various tests, I still was unable to rectify the out-of-sync audio situation for my test file. So I began to think that maybe the test file was messed up when it was recorded (even though my TV Tuner card has it’s own built-in MPEG encoder) with a previous installed codec, splitter, etc.
Thus, I manually recorded a 30-minute news broadcast to a WTV file, and use that file for a 2nd test. After the conversion process, I examined the generated WMV file on my Zune HD, and low-and-behold the audio appeared to be in complete sync with the video from start to finish! So, maybe it was something on my system before the “big purge” that was causing the WTV file to be messed up. But that is really strange, since the converted video files on my PC played back fine.
I can’t explain it… I’ll just hope that by removing all those 3rd-party Codecs and filters that my system can convert videos once again without making the final product appear to be like an old English-dubbed Bruce Lee movie! 
If I continue to have problems in the future, I’ll need to keep disabling any MPEG and audio -related items shown in InstalledCodec until I find the one that is causing the problem. It actually might be a Windows 7 installed item, which I might need to replace with a 3rd-party codec. Time will tell…
Stargate: Universe = Stargate: Atlantis?
I’ve been a big fan of the original Stargate: SG-1 SciFi series that ran for 10 seasons and had two direct-to-DVD movies. Just like with any successful TV show, producers created a spinoff series titled, Stargate: Atlantis which I also watched on and off when I had spare time. I thought Atlantis was an ok show, but after 6 seasons it seemed to duplicate a lot of the storylines from the SG-1 series. Now, MGM has created a new series called Stargate: Universe which I watched the pilot episode last night. After watching this first episode, I really question whether this series is “new”.
Universe has a lot of similarities to the previous Atlantis series, which I’ve sumarized below:
- Universe is set on a newly discovered Ancient spaceship — Atlantis is set on a newly discovered Ancient city (actually, a spaceship also)
- The Universe crew sets out to explore their new surroundings — the Altantis crew sets out to explore their new surroundings
- The Universe crew are in dire straits with a dying ship and must figure out how to fix the life support — the same for the Altantis crew
- The Universe crew are really, really far away from Earth and can’t go back home — same for the Atlantis crew (at least for the first few seasons)
- The Rodney McKay (brilliant scientist) character on Atlantis has been replaced by Dr. Rush and a college-aged young man who figure out an Ancient problem by playing a video game
- Major Sheppard on Atlantis is equivalent to Lt. Scott on Universe
- etc.
A lot of similarities… maybe too many. The filming of Universe is a direct copy of Battlestar Galactica, where they use a lot of hand-held cameras (ala, the show 24). They even showed a steamy sex scene which seemed to be another direct copy of Battlestar Galactica. It was obvious the producers were trying to piggyback off the success of BSG– maybe too obvious.
So will Universe be a hit? I really don’t think so. I think the concept of the Stargate series has suffered “franchise fatigue”, a term quoted and used for the last Star Trek series, Enterprise. I’ll predict that Universe will recycle old stories from the past Stargate series, as well as from Star Trek and BSG. Whatever the case, I’ll probably watch the next few episodes and see if the writers and producers can really come up with a fresh new show, or just show the same old stuff.
Video Conversion for the Zune HD
Normally, I used my Zune 80 for watching TV Show recordings that are converted from DVR-MS format (from Vista Media Center on my PC) to WMV file format for my Zune. Because the screen resolution for the Zune 80 is 320 x 240, that is the resolution that I convert to for the WMV files. Because my new Zune HD has a screen resolution of 480 x 272, the Zune HD player needs to stretch or extrapolate the pixels from the 32ox240 image up to 480×272 size. Now, the viewed images still look reasonable on my Zune HD, but I know they can be sharper if I use a higher resolution. So what settings work best, while still keeping the WMV file size down to a reasonable size?
Yesterday I took one of my TV show recordings that had a resolution of 720 x 480 and converted it to these parameters:
Resolution: 720 x 480
Video bit rate: 700 kbps, 30 fps
Audio bit rate: 128 kbps
Length: 42 minutes
File size: 254 MB
The video playback on my Zune HD looked pretty good, and there was no video tearing (that’s when objects in the video are moving around rapidly and you see distortions due to the motion). In comparison, one of my older converted WMV files has the following attributes:
Resolution: 320 x 240
Video bit rate: 700 kbps, 30 fps
Audio bit rate: 128 kbps
Length: 44 minutes
File size: 227 MB
So in this case the higher resolution file was about 12% larger in size, which isn’t too bad considering you’re getting a higher quality picture. In fact, at 720 x 480 I should be able to playback this video on a normal TV screen and it should look pretty good. So for now, I’m adjusting my video profile for my conversion software to use the 720 x 480 resolution for playback on my Zune HD.
And BTW, I’m still using DVRMSToolbox with the DVRMStoWMVHD program to do my video conversions.
Changing the Cover Art for a WMV Video File
As you may have read from my previous postings, I use my Zune primarily for watching TV shows that have been recorded on my desktop PC in DVR-MS format, and then converted to WMV format for my Zune. I’ve got the entire process automated using the wonderful utility called, DVRMSToolbox, along with a commercial-cutting utility called ShowAnalyzer.
The only small issue I have, is that the cover art for the generated WMV file (or “Thumbnail” image) is obtained from a randomly selected frame image from the video file. Since this frame image is selected before all the commercials are cut out, sometimes it will use a image frame from a commercial and thus looks bad as a cover art for the video file. As such, there isn’t an easy way of defining a different frame or image to be used as the cover art. You can use the File Explorer add-on utility called AudioShell to define the cover art, but that’s a very manual process and I want something that can be done on a command line for use with my DVRMSToolbox setup.
Thus, I created a small utility called setWMVThumbmailImage which will modify the WM/Picture attribute of WMV video file container and set the cover art to a specified jpg file. To use it, you run the following from a DOS command window:
setWMVThumbnailImage (input wmv file) art (cover.jpg)
So as an example, if I have a video file called, “fringe.wmv” and I want to change the cover art for this video to use the jpg image file, “fringe_show.jpg” I would use the following command,
setWMVThumbnailImage fringe.wmv art fringe_show.jpg
Note, that “art” is a required keyword that tells the application to insert the jpg as the cover art.
With this utility, I can now use it to insert a jpg image as the cover art for my converted DVR-MS file to WMV format. So, I can change the cover art, but how do I extract an image from the video file to be used as the cover art? The makers of DVRMSToolbox also have a utility called DSSnap which is suppose to extract a specified frame from a DVR-MS video file into a jpg file, but it doesn’t seem to work on my Vista OS system. As such, I discovered that I can use the well known video converter tool called FFMpeg to extract a specific image from a WMV video file to a jpg file. Here’s how I would extract the video frame image at 1 minute, 10 secs into the video playback,
ffmpeg -i “fringe.wmv” -an -ss 00:01:10 -t 00:00:01 -f image2 -vcodec mjpeg “fringe_show.jpg”
So I can use the above operation to get the desired jpg cover art from the video being processed, and use my utility to insert this jpg image as the cover art for the WMV video file. I’m going to test this a bit with my automated conversion system and if it works ok, I’ll make my cover art utility available on this web site in the near future. Stay tuned!
Online Videos for TV Buffs
As a kid growing up in hot Arizona from the late 60’s, I watched a lot of re-run TV shows from the comfort of my swamp-cooled bedroom. Shows like Star Trek, Time Tunnel, Man from UNCLE, Gilligan’s Island, Brady Bunch,MASH, and Gunsmoke were staples on our Black-n-White TV.
Recently, I stumbled across the web site, Archive of American Television, which documents old TV shows orally by video interviewing actors, producers, writers, and industry executives. Hundreds of videos describing the TV show process with a behind-the-scenes look from various perspectives. I recently watched some videos from Robert Justman (producer of Star Trek), James Arness (Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke), William Shatner (Captain Kirk on Star Trek), Alan Alda (MASH). Lots of good videos if you’re an old TV show buff.
In addition to the AAT site, there’s also hundreds of videos available from YouTube.com under the TVLEGENDS category, most of which come from AAT.
Instead of watching these videos directly on the AAT and YouTube.com web sites, I use an application called Orbit that allows me to download the video content onto my desktop PC as FLV video files. I then convert the FLV files to AVI format using a program called FFmpeg (with a DOS batch file), and finally convert the AVI files to WMV format using Windows Media Batch Encoder. I know it sounds like a big production to do the conversions, but most of it is run automatically with batch files and batch encoding. The only issue I’ve had is some video/audio out-of-sync situations because of low frame rate setting for some of the FLV files.
So if you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes of old TV shows, check out those sites and be ready for some real entertainment!
