WMV - Windows Video 7 or 9?

[noodleNT]

I know nothing about windows media video encoding. I see the presets all use V7. Why V7 and not 9? I would think 9 is better than 7. Can someone shed some light on this? The main reason I am looking into this is to watch recording from a mobile device.

[imf4]

9 looks the best but takes a really really long time to encode.
Your best bet is to use 8, it takes longer and looks better 7, but not as long as 9

I use 8 for files I am just recompressing to take with me and delete after I am done.
I use 9 for files I want to keep. I also use it for files when I recompress for my pocket pc because it looks better a low bitrates.

[noodleNT]

Thanks!

[noodleNT]

OMG!!! It does take forever! A half hour show is now 2 hours into squeezing and still running hard!

[imf4]

Recompression can really be a bear. I tend to just let stuff go overnight and not worry about it. There really isn't much you can do to speed it up. If you want speed just use WM7 or 8 with CBR. But the quality at isn't so hot compared to using VBR WM8 or WM9. It sucks there is nothing you can do to speed it up aside from a faster processor. Hopefully we will see some Windows media hardware cards this year that will come out when Media Center 2005 comes.(I am hoping)

[btvbuddy]

WMV9 needs PC horsepower to comeup with that higher quality, this may be one onf the many reasons why folks will still use DIVX. With DIVX, techies can also tweek alot of settings and the encodes seem to run faster when compared to WMV9.