Encoding Profiles

Audience.foundation has the ability to transcode MPEG2 video files into Windows Media Video (WMV) format automatically.

This is useful if you are using an Audience system for Broadcast TV purposes, and also are using Audience.web to create an Internet version of the channel. The automatic transcoding allows for the use of high quality MPEG2 files for your broadcast channel, and automatic Internet streaming of WMV files for Audience.web. If you are using Audience.web or Audience.playback.web for digital signage, the automatic transcoding feature is helpful in that it will allow you to use high quality MPEG2 source files, and convert them to high quality WMV files automatically.

The encoding profile that you choose (or create) should be suited to how you distribute content.

• If you are delivering over the Internet to end users on their desktops, or Digital Signage with thin clients, then bitrate is important, as each connected user or Digital Sign will need that available bitrate the first time a video file plays. For this reason, you should choose a lower bitrate and resolution profile such as 256Kb/s 320x240.

• If you are creating for Audience.playback.web Digital Signage, and you want high quality, you can choose or create higher bitrate and resolutions. A good balance is 1Mb/s 640x480. The performance of the playback will depend on the hardware capability of your thin client computers. It is best to test several bitrate / resolutions with your intended Thin Client or Audience.playback.web system hardware to see what works best for you.

While creating a resolution that matches your zone size (for example 800x600) will yield the best quality, the performance on less powerful playback / thin client computers may not be perfect, resulting in a file that 'staggers' as it plays. To improve performance it's best to scale down the clip by even multiples, in this case 400x300. This will result in smoother playback. The reason for using values divisible by 2 is that one of the most processor intensive tasks is scaling the clip to the zone size. If the clip resolution is divisible by 2, then it takes less processor horsepower to scale the clip.

 To Select a Profile

1.Go to File > Audience Settings in Audience.foundation and select another encoding profile from the drop-down menu.

2.Check “Enable Transcoding” for automatic video encoding.

Audience.foundation also supports Windows Media 9. To take advantage of this, you can create your own Windows Media 9 profiles.

To create a custom Windows Media 9 profile

1.In Audience.foundation, go to File > Audience Settings

2.Under Encoding Profiles, select Manage, then New.

3.Give your profile a unique name and description.

4.Select the language for the content.

5.Check the Audio checkbox and choose CBR as the mode and Windows Media Audio 9.2 as the CODEC.*

6.Check the Video checkbox and choose CBR as the mode and Windows Media Video 9 as the CODEC*

7.Choose NTSC or PAL as your video standard.

8.Press the Add button under Target bit rates. Choose a target bit-rate. 256K provides a good streaming number. You can increase this to 2M if you want high quality video that you deliver over a dedicated LAN to Audience.playback.web systems. Click OK.

9.You will switch to a TAB of the profile you just created (e.g. 256K).

10.Choose the Video Size. If you are using 256K profile, then 320 x 240 will give you a good quality picture

11.You can leave all other controls at their default values. Click OK

You can add 'multiple' bit rates to a profile, this way you can serve both lower and higher bandwidth connections with the same file. This does result in slightly lower performance at both rates.

* If you are using a Windows Media Server to serve your transcoded WMV files, then it is best if you use VBR mode in steps 5 and 6. VBR provides higher picture quality at a given bitrate. VBR only works with Windows Media Servers. If you are using a standard Audience.web server, then use CBR.

More information is available by selecting the 'Help' button in the Manage Profiles dialogue box. If you see a Page Cannot be Displayed when opening Help, simply click on an item in the Help tree.