WMA 8 & SF Products -ACID Product Family - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:WMA 8 & SF Products Posted by: ctbarker32 Date:1/22/2002 12:41:46 PM Hi, I was wondering if and when SF products will redistribute Windows Media 8 redistrib files with their products and incorporate into them? I have had a frustrating time getting acceptable results when exporting from SF products (Acid, Sound Fourge)to wma files. I downloaded the WMA 8 command line utils from MS and redid my encoding and got tremendously improved results for my wma's - especially in the area of high freq aliasing. I also installed a third party demo encoding tool that supports various formats and note that this tool installs the WMA 8 runtimes. It seems that current SF products don't support WMA 8? I could be mistaken but I am getting superior results using the command line util from MS as compared to using the Save dialog from SF products. Thanks for any clarification. -CB
Subject:RE: WMA 8 & SF Products Reply by: Iacobus Date:1/22/2002 1:26:23 PM I have no problem selecting "Windows Media Audio V8 (*.wma)" as a rendering type. (I'm assuming this is version 8 of the codec.) Do you have this choice as well? Iacobus
Subject:RE: WMA 8 & SF Products Reply by: Rockitglider Date:1/22/2002 1:47:16 PM http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp Try this it's an encoder made by Sonic Foundry for Windows Media Encoder See ya, Rockit
Subject:RE: WMA 8 & SF Products Reply by: ctbarker32 Date:1/23/2002 9:55:37 AM Ah, yes. The dialog says this but if you render a file and then examine the properties (I used siren to do this which gives good details) you may find that while it says WMA8, the audio codec says "Version 2" which as far as I can determine (based on listening as well)is the previous WMA codec encoder and not WMA 8. I have tested this by using the command line util and then examining the properties of the output file. In this case the audio codec listed is "WMA 8" instead of "Version 2". Interestingly since I installed a third party tool that explicitly uses WMA 8 the SF tools now seem to use the updated codecs - with significantly better sound at lower bit rates. I wish there was a way to know which DLLs are installed and their versions so that one could verify what version of WMA is installed. I also wonder why Vegas 3 didn't ship with WMA 8's updated codecs? As to installing Windows Player 7.1, I prefer Siren and wish to avoid installing 7.1. I installed 7 on another system and was underwhelmed at its features/performance and prefer not to burden my system with its installation. -CB

Subject:WMA 8 & SF Products

Posted by: ctbarker32

Date:1/22/2002 12:41:46 PM

Hi,

I was wondering if and when SF products will redistribute Windows Media 8 redistrib files with their products and incorporate into them? I have had a frustrating time getting acceptable results when exporting from SF products (Acid, Sound Fourge)to wma files. I downloaded the WMA 8 command line utils from MS and redid my encoding and got tremendously improved results for my wma's - especially in the area of high freq aliasing. I also installed a third party demo encoding tool that supports various formats and note that this tool installs the WMA 8 runtimes.

It seems that current SF products don't support WMA 8? I could be mistaken but I am getting superior results using the command line util from MS as compared to using the Save dialog from SF products.

Thanks for any clarification.

-CB

Subject:RE: WMA 8 & SF Products

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:1/22/2002 1:26:23 PM

I have no problem selecting "Windows Media Audio V8 (*.wma)" as a rendering type. (I'm assuming this is version 8 of the codec.) Do you have this choice as well?

Iacobus

Subject:RE: WMA 8 & SF Products

Reply by: Rockitglider

Date:1/22/2002 1:47:16 PM

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp

Try this it's an encoder made by Sonic Foundry for Windows Media Encoder

See ya, Rockit

Subject:RE: WMA 8 & SF Products

Reply by: ctbarker32

Date:1/23/2002 9:55:37 AM

Ah, yes. The dialog says this but if you render a file and then examine the properties (I used siren to do this which gives good details) you may find that while it says WMA8, the audio codec says "Version 2" which as far as I can determine (based on listening as well)is the previous WMA codec encoder and not WMA 8. I have tested this by using the command line util and then examining the properties of the output file. In this case the audio codec listed is "WMA 8" instead of "Version 2".

Interestingly since I installed a third party tool that explicitly uses WMA 8 the SF tools now seem to use the updated codecs - with significantly better sound at lower bit rates.

I wish there was a way to know which DLLs are installed and their versions so that one could verify what version of WMA is installed. I also wonder why Vegas 3 didn't ship with WMA 8's updated codecs?

As to installing Windows Player 7.1, I prefer Siren and wish to avoid installing 7.1. I installed 7 on another system and was underwhelmed at its features/performance and prefer not to burden my system with its installation.

-CB