I've got 2 WMV files from a recorded Live Meeting 2007 session. They were split up on purpose.

I've loaded them into Movie Maker 2, and was trying to edit the first, then join the 2 together. When I go to "save movie file", a timer starts to give me an estimate of how long it will take to create the file, but it counts *forever* (999+!).

Are there any known issues with saving WMV files within Live Meeting 2007 and them being "compatible" with Movie Maker?

Here's a snapshot of a recorded Live Meeting being viewed. The file is online and the viewer is part of Microsoft Office Live Meeting software.

• The Windows Media Video 9 Screen codec is optimized for compressing sequential screenshots and highly static video that is captured from the computer display, which makes it ideal for delivering demos or demonstrating computer use for training. The codec takes advantage of the typical image simplicity and relative lack of motion to achieve a very high compression ratio.
  
  During the encoding process, the codec automatically switches between lossy and lossless encoding modes, depending on the complexity of the video data. For complex data, the lossless mode preserves an exact copy of the data. For less complex data, the lossy mode discards some data to achieve a higher compression ratio. By automatically switching between these two modes, the codec maintains video quality while maximizing compression.
  
  Overall, the Windows Media Video 9 Screen codec delivers better handling of bitmap images and screen motion, even on relatively modest CPUs. It is also up to 100 times more efficient than the commonly-used run length encoding.
  
• The Voice codec is designed for very low bit rate encoding of 4 kbits/s to 20 kbits/s for speech, sampled at rates from 8 kHz to 22 kHz. It is intended for internet streaming. The encoder can switch between the normal WMA coding mode when music is detected, but switches to a code excited linear prediction (CELP) mode for speech.

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Live Meeting 2007 Recordings 

 

The two files played fine in Windows Media Player, and imported/previewed in Movie Maker 2.1 on XP and MM6 on Vista.

 

But drag one to the timeline and try to save just the first trimmed minute as a movie, and you never got past the 4% complete mark... and the estimated time to completion ramps up to forever. It was time to look at them closer.

 

Checking the file properties with a right mouse click showed:

• one was 13 min, 16 sec, and the other 1 hr, 7 min, 16 sec
• pixel dimensions: 704 x 528
• audio: bitrate of 224kbps, 16 bit sample size, mono, 8 kHz sample rate
• video: 200 kbps data rate, 24 bit sample size, stream name of video 2 

They aligned with the properties of the playing file we looked at above.

 

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A checkup with GSpot showed the files were made by the Windows Media Speech codec for audio compression, and the MSS2 Windows Media 9 Screen Codec for video compression.

 

Screen captured files are not that unusual. I make them using the same MSS2 codec with the Windows 9 Media Encoder, but somehow those produced by the Encoder work fine in Movie Maker projects. There must be something different about these coming from the Live Meeting environment.

 

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The next checkup tool is the Windows Media File Editor

 

Could it be all they needed was indexing or reindexing?

 

Simply opening the files with the File Editor and saving them is enough to reindex them. But that by itself wasn't enough to make the files usable to Movie Maker.

 

After each step, I'd try again in Movie Maker... trying to save the first minute of the first file to a new file. The 4% mark was the hurdle I was trying to jump over. No luck with the file indexed.

 

While in the File Editor I saw all those markers and the script command. Using the File Editor, I removed them all and tried again. No luck!!

 

I was trying to use Movie Maker as the conversion tool, and not having any luck.

 

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WMSnoop was next. The properties aligned with what we'd seen with other tools.

 

What I didn't see in WMSnoop was the typical regular rhythmic beat of keyframes, a usual feature of a video file. Even stories, with the Image codec, show routinely spaced keyframes.

 

My guess is Movie Maker needs source video files with keyframes. When not seeing any, it keeps looking and looking.... forever. It doesn't know what to do without them.

 

I don't have access to the software code to know what Movie Maker is actually thinking about... it's just like people... you can see them doing something, but you don't know what they are thinking.

 

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I knew we were needing to do file conversions. Marco had already gotten input from another MVP that the Windows Media Encoder could do them. I thought of trying the newer Expression Encoder but went with the tried and true Windows Media 9 Encoder.

 

Windows Media Encoder - File Conversion

 

The Encoder starts with the New Session Wizard asking what you want to do > Convert a file > Select the source file and provide the folder and name for the output file

 

At the next step you pick the method of distribution (see the image at the right). At this point none of the choices seem appropriate as I'm just wanting to make a video file that works in Movie Maker and give it back to Marco. I'm not going to distribute it. For the highest quality, I opt for File archive.

 

It really doesn't make a difference which choice you pick at this point. Once the wizard is finished you can tweak the properties of the session and change anything you want.

 

In the encoder session properties I opted for a high video bitrate of 5,000 kbps for a high quality output file (the bitrate of high quality DVDs, more than twice the highest choice in Movie Maker 2.1 unless you use a custom profile or opt for DV-AVI). I kept the video output file the same pixel size as the inputs... 704x528 pixels.

 

The videos were Power Point type shows with lots of smaller sized text, the kind of content that can significantly degrade when converting to movie files at lower bitrates, or recompressing the video to different pixel sizes.

 

The actual conversions went pretty quick, giving me two new source files for the movie project, ones rendered with a video codec rather than a screen codec. They'll have keyframes.

 

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the Movie Maker Project

 

The project was the easiest part of the process. Marco knew exactly what he wanted for trim points and arrangement.

 

Key to saving the movie at an appropriate level of quality is knowing where it's going, something I didn't know. I assumed it would be either played online using a broadband connection, or downloaded and played locally on a computer. Maybe he'll let me know after he reads this newsletter.

 

To keep the size of 704x528, I needed a custom profile. Page 2 of the profile in the Profile Editor shows what I opted for.

• The two original files had low quality mono audio... carried over into the converted source files by the Encoder as high quality stereo. To save file size in the final output, I went back to mono, at a higher quality than the original... to preserve whatever quality it had.
• The video size is the same as the originals... 704x528 pixels. It's a standard 4:3 aspect ratio but not of the pixel dimensions normally used. Again, because of the large amount of small text in the content, I didn't want the text effected by resizing one direction or the other.
• 15 frames per second is high for a slideshow, but only half of the usual 30 fps for NTSC videos. Using 15 fps saves lots of file size space and makes the movie easier to render.
• The video bitrate of 500 kbps is only 10% the size of the source files from the Encoder, low enough for smooth playing on broadband connections, yet high enough for good quality viewing of slideshow content.