WMM 5 versus 6

August 14, 2008 8:13 AM

How do i get Windows Movie Maker 6, Vista, to publish at 640x480?

By asking my members, the consensus was that they would prefer my videos to be .wmv format, high bit rate, high quality and at 640x480. Thats what my customers want.

Up until today, I had been using WMM Ver 5.1 on my XP machine. Using the "best fit to size" function I could find the best option by increasing the MB size through 320x240 then 640x480 until it hit 720x480, and go back down 1MB, and there it was.

That machine has gone all wonky and I had to upgrade to my Vista machine using WMM Ver 6. You would think that the newer version of WMM would be more robust and have more options. However, when I go publish now, the "best fit to size" goes straight from 320x240 to 720x480, adding 30-40% to the file size. The same file size that used to be assigned to the 640x480, are now assigned to super-high quality 320x240

As this is for an adult site, bandwidth is an issue, so I cant tack on all those extra MB.

Is there a way I can get 640x480 out of WMM Ver6 on Vista?

Thanks in advance!

XO

P.S. Please refrain from the "dump Windows Movie Maker and buy XYZ professional software" answers. :-)

posted by sandra_s to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

sandra, do you think the OS has anything to do with it? If you wanted to test that, I've got a copy of WMM2.6, which is what I presume you're referring to, that I doctored up to allow installation on XP by dropping one row from the Launch Conditions in the MSI file (I wanted the new version, but didn't want to go Vista on that box yet). If you'd like to give that a shot, mefimail me and I'll put it up somewhere where you can grab a copy.
posted by JaredSeth at 8:46 AM on August 14, 2008

What bitrate do you want?

I see 640x480 at 1Mbps when I select "Windows Media VHS Quality (1.0 Mbps)"
posted by Diddly at 10:40 AM on August 14, 2008

Super or Windows Media Encoder will re-encode your wmv file to whatever rate you like. I'd publish a nice high-res one and then re-encode the web deliverable.

If bandwidth is an issue, I would move towards a tighter codec like mp4. I dont remember what wmv uses, but I think its a generation behind.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:55 AM on August 14, 2008

Also, if you play with these encoders you may find a much more optimal bitrate than whatever wmm uses by default. For your application perhaps you can get away with 192 or 256 kbps. If wmm does 384 or 512kbps by default then you've saved a lot of bandwidth.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:59 AM on August 14, 2008