windows media 9 encodes are great, any reason not to use?

[basterd!!]

i've just started experimenting with how best to compress my five minute video. I've just discovered how great windows media 9 encodes are. a 73 meg file is of greater quality than a 100 meg divx file with 2 pass option done or mpeg 2 encoding at 100 meg.

Seriously is there any reason for me not to post my vid in windows media format?

[Kalium]

Try encoding with XviD. There's a guide here on how to do so.

In short, WMV9 is inferior to a lot of other things. A properly compressed XviD will be smaller.

[Zero1]

I ran some tests a while back.

Basically quality wise when encoding to a target bitrate they came out in this order of quality (1 being best, 3 being worst)

1) XviD
2)Windows Media 9 (Assuming you 2 pass encode and really tweak the settings)
3)DivX

I can't remember the file versions, I think XviD was 1.00RC4 and DivX was 5.05

Many would say stay away from Windows Media and it's confined format (wmv), but Microsoft also have an ACM WMV9 codec available (so you can use it in apps like virtualdub).

But if you are going to encode in Virtual dub anyway, I wouldnt waste my time installing WMV9, just install XviD and go with that.

More people will have the XviD or compatible codec installed as opposed to WMV9 (unless something like FFDShow decodes it or whatever)

[trythil]

If Microsoft either creates decoders or facilitates the creation of decoders for all platforms (and I mean ALL PLATFORMS), then sure, go ahead.

Until I can get Windows Media 9 to play back on my Gentoo AMD64 setup in 64-bit mode, though, I'll just snub your AMVs because of a format incompatibility that I cannot resolve without resorting to hacks.

[Zero1]

Microsoft also have an ACM WMV9 codec available (so you can use it in apps like virtualdub)

My bad, it's a VCM codec (Video Compression Manager) ACM being an Audio Compression Manager.

Damn, where's my edit button...