Completely befuddled - WMV conversion to MPEG-2?

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

I have a vid done in Windows Movie Maker. I'd like to submit to Escapade, but the instructions are as good as Greek to me. Can anyone help me figure out what I need to do to change the file to meet these requirements?

Electronic Submission:

1. Your vid should be submitted as two separate files: A video file encoded in MPEG-2, at 720x480 full-screen resolution, NTSC, using a 5500-6500 kpbs bitrate, and saved with an "m2v" suffix, and an audio file encoded at 48kz in WAV or AIFF format.
2. Each vid must have 10-30 seconds of silent black space at the beginning and end.
3. Use the following naming convention:

vidpriority_yourname_songtitle.{wav,m2v}
(Note: leave out spaces, all punctuation and special characters)

Example:
The files for the first-priority vid submitted by vidder Super-Amazing Vidder!! to the song I'm A Little Teapot would be named:
1_superamazingvidder_imalittleteapot.m2v
1_superamazingvidder_imalittleteapot.wav


When I look at the saving options for WMV, these are my options. I have no clue if any of those match up with the requirements above:



Any advice or easy answer?

Thanks!

Laura

Comments

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I do not vid on a PC, but I googled and found this

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=195505

Two PC programs I know of that will encode to MPEG2 are TMPEGEnc (with a 14 day free trial) and the free LlamaEnc (which was on the VVC website).

a lot of WMM info is here
http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Thanks Morgan!!

[sol-se.livejournal.com]

btw, here's the free LlamaEnc (http://community.livejournal.com/vividcon/67253.html) that morgandawn mentioned. I haven't tried it yet though.

[ageless-aislynn.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I don't know what Escapade is but as far as I know, WMM can only render as WMV and AVI (which will result in a huge file if it's using the basic uncompressed AVI codec). On its own, I don't believe it can encode as MPEG-2, I'm sorry to say. :(

There may be a freeware program that can convert it from WMV into MPEG-2 but I haven't come across it so far. :(

Wow, I'm just full of bad news, huh? Sorry! ;)

PS - Now I'm curious, though. What is Escapade? ;) And are they really asking you to submit your vid as a separate video file and WAV file? In other words, to separate the music from the video? Or am I reading that wrong? Thanks! :D

[ageless-aislynn.livejournal.com]

And oops, sorry I crossposted there... ;)

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Yep, both. Confuses me too and I'm really new to vidding and WMV is the only software I have. :(

I'm saving it to dvd-avi and see if I can change *that*, but thanks so much for the advice!

Escapade is a slash con in California: http://www.escapadecon.net/index.php

[ageless-aislynn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling me about Escapade and thanks also for the link! ;) I read the submission info and I see they won't accept WMV. You might be able to email and explain that you only have WMM and can't meet their MPEG-2 requirements and they may be willing to accept the AVI file. I see that they are willing to accept VHS submissions, though they warn that the quality will be lower because of it. And AVI is much better than VHS, lol! ;)

They're just trying to get the best quality vids that they can, understandably since they'll probably be shown on a large screen and lower quality vids will blur out to nothing when they get magnified that large! o_O ;)

Anyway, best of luck to you! Happy vidding! :D

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

thanks so much, Aislynn!

[slash-girl.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for a completely free program for converting vid formats try SUPER: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html It will convert from just about any format to another...including wmv to mpeg2. It will let you change the audio format, but I don't know if it will seperate it from the video track (nor do I know how to do so!) Hope that helps a little.

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you, I will most definitely check that out!

(Hey, one of my nicknames in high school was banana, lol!)

[murasaki1200.livejournal.com]

You're not going to want to reencode WMV to MPEG-2 or it will affect the video quality. Ideally you would start from MPEG-2 material like from a DVD and edit the MEG-2 directly using something like Nero or Sonic's MyDVD to produce an MPEG-2 movie. Movie Maker only saves in .WMV, not in MPEG-2.

[darlulu.livejournal.com]

You've probably already figured this out by now, but if not, here's what I used to do when I had to submit a vid I'd created using WMM.

I saved my final draft as 'DV-AVI (NTSC)' in WMM then opened TMPGEnc which someone already linked to.

I chose 'NTSC' under the DVD heading on the left then 'CBR Linear PCM Audio' before clicking next.

I then plugged my avi file into the video designation and it automatically popped up in the audio as well then clicked 'next' then 'next' again until I reached the bitrate setting page.

I then made sure the bitrate was between 5500 and 6500 kpbs and that the first line labeled 'Movie info' listed the audio as 48000 Hz stereo.

I clicked 'next' again and saved the files. Both files are automatically created separately so that after it completes the process you should have one video file with the m2v suffix and a wav audio file as well saved to your harddrive. Then voila, you're done and just have to make sure you've got the naming/priority thing all settled. :)

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

step by step! You are an angel! Thank you!

[sol-se.livejournal.com]

Popping in to say thank you! I was wondering this was well...