WMV import

[vvr]

WMV import would be nice. Tricaster livemode can play WMV but SE cannot open WMV.

 

[lcress]

I think this is one of those times when you need to convert to SpeedHQ first then do your edit.

 

[vvr]

There is no way converting WMV to SpeedHQ on a Tricaster. Speededit cannot open WMVs and even the new Rev 4a version can´t import WMVs for conversion (in the "Manage" functions). The only way to handle WMVs is to play it back in livemode and do a MPEG2 record - happens of course in realtime, very slow. That record will open in Speededit for further editing or conversion. I think this workflow is a pain, unnecessary and could easily be avoided by integrating WMV import filter in Speededit - Tricaster livemode can play WMVs, why not Speededit? Or at lease it should be convertable by the import function in the "Manage" menu. WMV is a very common format, we get more than half of our supplied media in WMV formats.

 

[Shabazzy]

Have you tried changing the file extension from .wmv to .avi and tried to convert to SpeedHQ from that?

It doesn't always work. But sometimes it does.

 

[SBowie]

WMV is a very common format, we get more than half of our supplied media in WMV formats.

I'll make some inquiries about this, but it's rather a shame you are expected to work with them. WMV was initially intended for web streaming, and (more recently) sometimes is used for DVD distribution, but it was never really intended for editing or post production purposes.

(The answer to my inquiry, mentioned above, was basically that it is not a format well suited to editing and if it was included would perform very poorly. I wonder where people are getting these files they expect you to edit?)

 

[vvr]

.. but it's rather a shame you are expected to work with them.

Let me explain why we need to process WMVs: we get a lot of DDR clips for Tricaster live productions from all kinds of agencies that produce video clips for our customers. These clips are usually mastered and transferred in a high efficency codec/container. This can be i.e. h.264/MP4, MPEG2 or VC1/WMV, all in HD with at least 10mbps. So for mastered clips a high quality encoding setting with VC1/WMV is quite common since it plays on a large variety of devices and players. At least we get a lot of clips like that, I can´t speak for others.
Unfortunately we need to edit/transcode these clips in SpeedEdit prior to using them in DDR livemode: for multilingual productions we need to copy audio channels 1-2 on channels 3-4 in order to hear the sound for the second language. If there would be an advanced audio-routing feature in Tricaster livemode, we would not need to do that. Secondly we recently had a bunch of VC1/WMV files that played back perfectly on WMPlayer or VLC Player but not on Tricaster in livemode (maybe I´ll report this in a new thread after some investigation of the files), so we definitely had to transcode them to a format that livemode could play.

So in the end: for our environment, WMV is a very important format that we get delivered frequently. Being able to read it with either the Import function on Tricaster or SpeedEdit would help a lot. For now we need to use another tool/machine to do the job.

 

[SBowie]

Thanks for the added info.

 

[travisr]

You can first convert them using Windows Movie Maker. I convert them to AVI (DV codec), and then load them into SE2. The files play back well, and with minimal quality loss.

 

[Mutley Eugenius]

That's not what I heard

I first asked about that 10 years ago and the answer I got, which I believe, is that it was a licensing issue between SE & MS. Exporting is one license, importing is another. It makes sense to me, I bought a converter program got over it.

Hasn't really bothered me since.