Quick & Easy Windows Media Conversions on a Mac (from: Marc Policani’s Digital Media Blog)
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WMV-9 Export Component turned out to be a great little application for quickly encode WMV files directly from within Final Cut Pro HD (currently, only the HD version of Final Cut Pro is supported). I ran two tests to see how the results came out using a 1 GHz iBook G4 to mimic field conditions for remote compressing and uploading. The project was a trailer that fellow filmmaker Craig Knapp had just cut in full HD resolution using DVCPRO HD media.
The interface is simple and intuitive and can be opened in Final Cut when the Export tab is selected. Using QuickTime Conversion, select the media format you will convert the sequence into from the list, which includes WMV-9.
After selecting the WMV-9 format, you are given several options as to what the ultimate parameters of the compressed video will be, including the frame size, bit rate, and audio rate. There are numerous presets you can use for simplicity, or you can customize the file and compression rates with a variety of variables.
For the first compression test, we chose the "Widescreen Medium" preset, as the original source material was in 16×9. The picture quality of this preset was 80%, and the length of the trailer to be compressed was 2 minutes and 14 seconds of uncompressed HD media. Another option available before the encoding process is started is the ability to embed title description and other information within the video file. That includes information such as author, rating, and copyright material.
The encoding time took around ten minutes on the iBook to process the video file from the HD media into the Windows Media 9 format. The final file size of the video was 2.6 M. That was all it took to convert and compress the trailer in its entirety.
The second test we ran used the same original trailer, but we upped the ante a bit. Choosing the custom option for the encoding, we boosted the image size from 320×180 to the larger 640×360. We also adjusted the image quality from 80% to the full 100% to see how it affected the encoding process. [ more… ]
