andy vt's tools & blog

Hi Folks!

I presently convert all recordings to wmv and I found out that some recordings don't look right with respect to the aspect ratio. To that end I went into the prx file that I use and changed the setting for that prx to "Same as input file" which should keep the original source's aspect ratio when doing conversions.

I then tried a manual test conversion using the GUI and to my surprise conversions always failed when the wmv profile was set to 'Same as inut file'

Is there a  work-around for this?

 Yeah, I've noticed the same thing.  I'm not sure what the problem is.

That's why I've been wondering if converting to .avi is a better way to fly? I seem to be having some issues with conversion to .wmv that I just can't seem to resolve. The interlace lines on the screen being the most important.

So, I guess the question is, what should I be using for conversion of recordings on Media Center 7 that will be played back on Media Center 7 (ie. not for zune or iphone etc - just for archiving) ?

I don't know the best way.  When I did that, I uses MKV w/ h.264 + AC3.

Thanks for the tip Andy it got me far down the road :-)  After a bit of messing around I came up with a good .mkv profile that really works. The video quality is good and as soon as I check the box for  x264 Interlaced encoding those annoying horizontal lines that I can't get rid of in .wmv transcodes disappear completely :-)

What I can't figure out though is why the .wmv files that I've been transcoding on Windows 7 always have those interlace lines. I thought it was because I got a new (larger) TV and didn't see them before but I just watched a whole bunch of shows that I transcoded from back when I was running XP and....those lines aren't there and they were converted with the same prx profile.

Is it possible that something .wmv related changed between XP and Windows 7? Could it be the encoder part of Windows 7 was changed or something?

I'm just curious, although I would rather keep the metadata that I get with .wmv then use .mkv However, at least I'm not stuck anymore :-)