New Tool, Standard for Windows Media

The latest addition to Microsoft’s arsenal of free Windows Media tools and the approval of Windows Media Video as a standard by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) could spur more content companies to use Microsoft’s video format.

Windows Media Encoder Studio Edition, which will be released in beta in May 2006, is designed for video professionals to encode offline video-for example, to convert film or tape for shipment on optical media (e.g., high-definition DVDs) or delivery as video-on-demand programming-using the Windows Media Video 9 (WMV 9) family of codecs, which compress video for storage or transmission. Studio Edition builds on the standard Windows Media Encoder, adding features such as the ability to apply different quality settings to different segments within a single video file, support for hardware acceleration, and better quality video capture with smaller file sizes. However, Studio Edition supports a much narrower set of scenarios than the standard Encoder-for example, customers who want to capture, encode, and stream live video using the WMV 9 codecs must continue to use the standard Encoder.