wm8eutil FAQ by gft

I've run the installation. So where is the windows media 8 encoder?

If C is your system drive letter, it will be in C:\program files\windows media components\tools. The program's name is wm8eutil.exe. There is also a very useful help file there (WMEnUtil.chm, simply double click it). I suggest you read it before going elsewhere for help.

What file formats can wm8eutil read?

wm8eutil can ONLY read .avi and .wmv/wma files, and because this is a microsoft program that is unlikely to change.

How can I edit a wmv movie?

First of all, you can change the .wmv to .asf and the file still works just fine. Secondly, this allows you to use the program asfchop.exe. This program is available as part of Microsoft�s Windows Media Tools package. http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/WinMedia/tools/wmtools.asp

Your editing tools for file outputed from wm8eutil are very limited. If your audio is out of sync, there is currently no way to demux the video, create a new audio track, and then combine them back together.

How do I frameserve to wm8eutil from VirtualDub

You can't. Instead, use aviutl, save your aup project file, and then convert that to an avi using VFAPIConv.

How do I crop (clip) with pixel quantities other than multiples of four?

It is a good idea to do your cropping before you open your movie in wm8eutil. Any program you use to combine the audio and video of your DVD movie before sending it to VFAPI (or otherwise saving an avi) should have a cropping feature VirtualDub, AviUtl, and TMPGEnc are the utilities that come to mind here.

Is WM8 really better than DivX?

In some cases yes, especially when you want to use 2 pass variable bit rate encoding to get the highest quality into the most precise filesize possible. It also has the ability to do constant image quality encoding (-v_mode 2 and �v_quality xxx) in one pass, which changes the bitrate on a frame by frame basis to keep the encoding quality constant.

However, a true comparison is beyond the scope of this document.

I'm getting sick of typing all of these options into the command line, isn't there an easier way?

Why yes, there are three ways:

1. Use a GUI. Doom9's download page has a very good one.

2. Creat your own weu configuration file. Create a plain text file with the extension .weu. On each line put a seperate command line option. Here is the WEU file I used to encode Amadeus (160 minutes long) onto one CD:

-input "E:\amadeus_tpr-vfapi.avi"
-output "C:\Amadeus.wmv"
-v_width 512
-v_height 216
-v_mode 3
-v_bitrate 407000
-a_setting 160_48_2
-title "Amadeus"
Line 1: path to input file. In this case it is an .avi created with vfapi from a .tpr file created in TMPGEnc.

Line 2: path to the file to be written.

Line 3: width of the video, must be a multiple of 4.

Line 4: height of the video, must be a multiple of 4.

Line 5: sets the encoder to two pass variable bitrate. Other options are:

0 - single pass CBR
1 - two pass CBR
2 - single pass VBR
3 - two pass VBR
Line 6: the average bitrate in bits per second desired. If you add the audio and video bitrates together, you'll see that for this 160 minute video the .wmv should turn out to be 649 MB.

Line 7: sets the bitrate, sampling rate, and number of channels in the format bitrate_samplerate_channels. The possible combinations are in the help file included with WM8.

Line 8: This is the title of the movie that will be displayed in Windows Media Player regardless of what the file name is.

A very useful option is -time, which allows you to encode a portion of your movie. The format is -time starttime endtime where both are given in milliseconds. For instance, -time 10000 20000 would encode seconds 10 to 20.

The order in which the command line options come does not matter.

When you are ready to use your config file, type the following in your command prompt (make sure you are in the directory where wm8eutil is, or have it on your PATH): wm8eutil -config configfile.weu. You can override options in the config file by typing new ones on the command line.

3. Use the built in profiles. For more information on how to use those open the wm8 help document and look for "Understanding profiles" in the index.

Can I ask you a question? I have read doom9's guide, this FAQ, the help file that comes with wm8eutil, and I still need help.

Why, yes, you can! Post your wm8eutil question on doom9's messageboard on the appropriate catagory (probably WM8).