video codec programming issue

Question

Hello everyone,

I am programming on Windows Media Encoder 9 to record screen, and we can select two video codecs, (1) Windows Media Video 9 codec and (2) Windows Media Video 9 Screen codec.

My questions,

1. I am a little concerned about using (2), since I think for most client computer, they intalled with Windows Media Video 9 codec, but no Windows Media Video 9 screen codec. So the video recorded/encoded using Windows Media Video 9 screen codec will have trouble to play on most computers? Not sure whether my understanding is correct?

2. For recording quality/performance, whether (1) or (2) is preferred?

3. Any other good advice for the choices between (1) and (2) when recording screen using WME 9?

thanks in advance, George

Answer 1

Windows Media Video 9 Screen

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.

That definitely sounds like the way to go if you're doing screencasts, and I wouldn't worry about compatibility since any computer with Windows Media Player 11, ffdshow, or VLC Player should be able to play it.