More on video backgrounds

[fishnchyps]

I realise that there are other threads about video but I though I might get more people viewing mine if I started a new one.

I have noticed a few video types mentioned, yet no mention of Windows Media Video (.WMV) which is the Microsoft standard and the format which Windows Movie Maker saves as. I do a video for the youth notices each week using this format so it would be good to see it supported. If not immediately perhaps create a codec in the future that can be added in.

Some people have suggested using PowerPoint for playing videos however PowerPoint takes time to load the file and it often goes out of sync. At the moment I have been dragging Windows Media Player onto the secondary screen (projector) and playing it full screen through that but video support in ZionWorx would be excellent and much easier, particularly to the less advanced projectionist who have to rely on me everytime videos are shown.

To those people who think that moving backgrounds would be a distraction, this is not the case. I know that many churches and my school used live video backgrounds showing the singers and also the speaker (obviously with no text overlay). My school currently uses a Multigen for this (like blue screen special effects for computers).

~Daniel Ralph
CY Youth Multimedia Director

p.s. If you'd like to see the "youth news" videos that I do see my website.

[Christian]

Thanks for starting this thread Daniel... I'll be very interested to see the results!

[Diceman]

WMV is Mirco$oft's propriety codec. It supports rights management which is not the best thing to be endorsed since it will ultimately make it very difficult for us to legitimately use material for which we have obtained the rights but not a un-rights managed file (The Classic is Jesus of Nazareth for which performance rights can be obtained by writing to Carlton).

I would recommend users not to endorse rights management since it does little to stop real pirates and frustrates legitimate users like you and I.

Proponents would say that legitimate users have nothing to fear - yet my example demonstrates otherwise.

Windows AVI wrapper is a much more flexible and widely used standard format - it supports everything from DV to Indeo, DivX and Motion-Jpeg.

Include support for Apple's Mov and that will be more than sufficient. If we don't demand the consumer right to save to these more standard formats from Microsoft - they will deny it from us and in due course - remove our right to chose.

Incidentally - AVI IS NOT OLD. There are two versions - one which fully supports directX9 through direct draw and the original which does not. AVI 2.0 supports many more codecs than the divisive WMV lobster pot.

Diceman.

[fishnchyps]

Dear Diceman,

I didn't mean that the AVI format is old; I meant that it was Microsoft's old standard before WMV which was introduced in the 2000's I believe and has really been pushed through the new version of Movie Maker. I know that AVI is a good format but it is also produces rather large files to achieve good quality. WMV is good enough for me, especially since it's files are about half the size as MPEG for approximately the same bit rate.