Hi Mike,

I have been using WMV 9 in 1024x576 resolution and find it the best
format for consumer distribution for older 16x9 PAL content
(streatched horizontally rather than shrunk vertically) as well as
reasonable resolution for HD-originated material. I am surprised 2
Mbits per second looks reasonable in 1920x1080. I use 5 Mbps in
1024x576 as a minimum bitrate. Generally I encode material in
1024x576 at 10 Mbps and it plays nicely on recent PCs. It looks
noticably better than std def PAL, not to mention NTSC and fits most
consumer grade displays just nicely since most have 1024x768
resolution plasma, LCD or projection units. Wouldn't it be better to
encode lower rez (like the 1024x576) in higher bitrate than in
1920x1080 at low bitrate? I think your PC and the Mac struggle with
the resolution, not with the bitrate.

Cheers,

Pawel
www.AliensOfTheSea.com

--- In hdtvproduction@yahoogroups.com, michael brennan <vista@n...>
wrote:
> WM 9 is comming along nicely. Have been seriously playing with it.
If
> the source material is clean and noise free it compresses very well
> indeed to 2 mb per second. The pictures look 75% of the original.
If
> the pictures are slightly noisy or have lots of random detail like
> heat haze then the picture is less satisfying.
>
> However, the problem is that 1920 x1080 2mb per second is still
not
> playable at 25 frames per second on average desktop. My mac G4
800mhz
> does about 2 frames per second from these files. Dual 1 GHz PC
> struggles to about 15fps.
>
> Give it 2 years and we'll be in business.
>
>
>
> Mike Brennan