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StanWelks
Known Participant
February 13, 2012
Question

Exporting for Windows Media Player?

  • February 13, 2012
  • 6 replies
  • 38640 views

I work on a Mac and am switching from FCP. In FCP the option was to export as QT or h.264. I'm noticing in CS5.5 on a Mac that there is no .WMV option.

1. Is .WMV not used anymore?

2. What is the best format to export for Windows users?

Thanks.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    6 replies

    GeoTav-vYaBt0
    GeoTav-vYaBt0
    Participant
    June 23, 2016

    I've been having the same problem when Exporting from Premiere Pro to send on to clients that want to view it on Windows Media Player.

    I had two different videos that I sent onto a client, exported using H.264 HD 1080p 25 .mp4 and one of the videos worked and the other one didn't.

    They were both exported using the same settings but one of the videos was a larger size than the other.

    So I reduced the size of the video that didn't work to below 500MB (it was 403.9MB in the end) and this seemed to work.

    Maybe see if this helps with you.

    Hope that this solves the problem.

    George

    R
    Rallymax-forum
    Inspiring
    February 13, 2012

    Export the video as H.264 and container it in MP4 instead of MOV.

    Windows Media Player will play .mp4 with no extra plug-ins required.

    You also have the bonus that in doing so you'll avoid the gamma problems of QuickTime (and requirement for the client to install it).

    J
    Jim Curtis
    Inspiring
    February 13, 2012

    Seems like it ought to.  But, I keep getting mail from my clients saying, "I can't open this."  My movies have the mp4 extension.  What can I tell them to get them to play?

    R
    Rallymax-forum
    Inspiring
    February 13, 2012

    Thanks.  I'm guessing that for a lot of big corporations I'm dealing with are on old OS builds of Windows.  Probably not Windows 7, probably not Vista.

    Here's a typical export setting I use:

    The irony here is that one of my clients who can't view mp4s is a high-tech provider of cloud services and internet devices.


    Your settings are fine.

    Your clients most likely run Windows Server 2003 or 2008; both of which are perfect for use in cloud services but don't have extensive multimedia support.

    The no-codec-required answer is to render to mpeg2 not h.264.

    The get-them-to install a codec answer (QuickTime, FFdshow, VLC, MPlayer etc etc) all add h.264 and mp4 container support.

    Most likely these machines don't have WMV with VC1 anyhow - so even if you could render to WMV it won't work.

      J
      Jim Curtis
      Inspiring
      February 13, 2012

      I prefer to make H.264 for client reviews, but a lot of clients can't or won't figure out how to play them, and insist on WMV.  Being on Mac, I export ProRes from Pr, and then use QT Pro to make the WMVs.  There is a gamma shift using this process.  The MP4 looks like the original, is a far superior looking codec at lower bit rates than WMV.

      I suggest that clients install the free cross-platform VLC player, which is the Swiss Army Knife of media players.  But, a lot of corporate IT departments won't let them install any software.

      I look at the extra transcoding steps as a revenue generating opportunity.

      E
      excited_Genie16B8
      Legend
      February 13, 2012

      1. For the kinds of thing you'd use WMV, I'd say H.264. is by FAR the more common choice.

      2. This depends on what it will be used for, but H.264 wil offer the best image quality at any given bitrate, far superior to WMV.

      shooternz
      shooternz
      Legend
      February 13, 2012

      I use wmv to avoid the QT gamma issue.

      Unfortunately  many clients use the review files to make IQ judgements.  I get more negative comments when I do QT (h264) than I do with wmv despite the fact there are no issue with the files they are produced from.

      Todd_Kopriva
      Todd_Kopriva
      Inspiring
      February 13, 2012

      You need a third-party component to export WMV files on Mac OS. One such piece of software is Flip4Mac: http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm

      shooternz
      shooternz
      Legend
      February 13, 2012

      WMV is used a lot ( by me and my clients and I assume many others on all platforms because no one ever tells me they cant use it).

      WMV is a great option for Windows Users.  It avoids Quicktime issues such as gamma and PAR weirdness.

      What are you going to do about it?

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