WMA 10 Pro compatibility

[MatthewQuinn]

Hello all

Im looking to shift our live commentary service which is WMA @ 20kbps to work with dial up. Over years last 9 years we have gone from wma 4.1 (is that right, or was that the encoder?? HAZY!) all the way to 9 and now I want to move to 10Pro @ 32kbps to retain the ability to capture dial up users in far off lands.

I have performed some tests on Macs and Flip4Mac seems to like WMA10 without fuss, Windows machines should just download the codec automatically but is there anything that this may cause compatability issues with?

Matthew Quinn
LiverpoolFC.tv

[benwaggoner]

(11-13-2008 07:07 AM)MatthewQuinn Wrote:  Im looking to shift our live commentary service which is WMA @ 20kbps to work with dial up. Over years last 9 years we have gone from wma 4.1 (is that right, or was that the encoder?? HAZY!) all the way to 9 and now I want to move to 10Pro @ 32kbps to retain the ability to capture dial up users in far off lands.

I have performed some tests on Macs and Flip4Mac seems to like WMA10 without fuss, Windows machines should just download the codec automatically but is there anything that this may cause compatability issues with?

WMA 10 Pro LBR (32-96 Kbps) will play at half sample rate on any WMA 9 Pro decoder. Full fidelity requires an updated decoder, like those in WMP 11 and Silverlight 2. I don't recall if Flip4Mac's current version has this yet, but decoder support for it is included in our current Porting Kits that are used for Flip4Mac and other products.

Note that WMP 9-10 won't download an updated decoder automatically. You'll need to install WMP11 to get full fidelity as part of WMP. Silverlight 2 includes its own implementation, and always provdies full fidelity regardless of what WMP version is installed, if any.

[MatthewQuinn]

Thanks for that, turns out that half fidelity of wma9 pro still actually sounds better than the original codec we were using.

[benwaggoner]

(11-26-2008 06:05 AM)MatthewQuinn Wrote:  Thanks for that, turns out that half fidelity of wma9 pro still actually sounds better than the original codec we were using.

Really? Well, glad it's working for you. Do you have any sense how many of your users don't have LBR support? If it's a lot, you might consider offering a Silverlight-based player for them. Silverlight 2 can run on platforms like Windows 2000 where WMP 11 isn't available.