Windows Media 9 Series by Example.: By Example (DV Expert Series) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Lucidly written, but never dry, the author walks you though all the new features of WM9, including how to use it with Microsoft's improved Movie Maker 2, how to encode your movies (or your songs) for delivery over the Web (as progressive download, for example, a much needed feature in my opinion, as a QuickTime user), or for delivery on CD and DVD and for handheld devices. Numerous examples and suggestions are provided for encoding.

Also, I was particularly pleased with the chapter on protecting your movies with Microsoft's Digital Rights Management software. Trying to get the lowdown on this from Microsoft's own site is nightmarish, but the author carefully describes all of the steps involved if you're serious about protecting your digital content.

This book belongs on the shelf of any serious digital video producer.

Windows Media 9 is arguably the best engineered bundle of media technologies available to individuals at a reasonable cost. The problem is, Microsoft has a habit of releasing huge bodies of technology and tools with different but overlapping functionality. Though it's great to have so many options, too many choices can be overwhelming to a beginner. There are plenty of ways to go down blind alleys or to waste time using sub-optimal settings when doing media captures or conversions.

This book is exactly what I needed to get over those initial hurdles. With clarity and conciseness it answers:

- What are the moving parts of Windows Media?
- What are their capabilities?
- How do you set them up for high-quality results without a lot of tweaking?
- When can you accept default settings and when do you customize?

With a conversational writing style and step-by-step recipes, the author shows how to "wrangle" media using free or low-cost software from Microsoft and other companies, including some little-known goodies from Microsoft's website.

In the few weeks I've had this book, it has already saved me real time on two projects. Variable-speed playback (which I would not have known was there!) helped me quickly find pertinent quotes in captured audiotapes of a series of interviews. And I was able to instantly hit on settings that gave great quality VHS captures for transfer to DVD without a lot of experimentation.

I use video and audio professionally, but I'm not a professional cinematographer. If you are, of course you will need to go beyond what this book can tell you. That is not a slam on the book. No book can encompass the scope available to a professional artist in any field. But Windows Media 9 Series By Example gave me exactly what I needed to start delivering high-quality video and audio to my clients with little more equipment than an ordinary desktop computer. Highly recommended.