Tech FAQs

What are the recommended operating system configurations for Video Convert/Split/Merge Studio?

Windows 98/SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 2003.

How can I get rid of the message in the middle of the finished movie?

The ad banner is only in the trial version. If you purchase the program and enter the license, there will be no text or other messages in your movies.

I'm trying to find a video converter to convert wmv and/or mpg to asf so that I can stream it with a Windows Media Server. Does your software do this?

There is not need to convert wmv to asf. Windows Media Server supports wmv files perfectly. WMV is a more advanced format than ASF, we may say that ASF is a previous version of WMV.

I've installed the latest version of Video Convert/Split/Merge Studio. Do I have to register it again? How can I figure out if the registration is complete or not?

You can easily find out if your registration is complete or not through: a) If you have an unregistered version installed at your computer, it would remind you to register, and what you have to do is entering Serial number. b) There is no watermark banner in the middle of the screen of output files after your Video Convert/Split/Merge Studio has been registered.

Does you product support Windows Media 9?

More advanced than the other converter, Video Convert/Split/Merge Studio supports Windows Media 9. Moreover we are watching for the new releases of Microsoft and include support for them in our programs. We will update our software with the tech advancement.

What are audio and video codecs?

A video or audio Codec (Compression/DeCompression) is a software component allowing to encode data to be stored on a media (CD, DVD, etc...) and/ to decode it to be visualized or heard. There are also so-called "hard" codecs usually embedded to camcorders or digital video players or professional and semi-professional video cards for video editing and composing.

What video formats are supported by Video Convert/Split/Merge Studio?

AVI: It is short for "Audio Video Interleave", the original Microsoft file format for Microsoft's Video for Windows standard. It is an audio video standard designed by Microsoft and is apparently proprietary and Microsoft Windows specific. It is a format developed for storing video and audio information. Files in this format have an .AVI extension. However, Video for Windows does not require any special hardware, making it the lowest common denominator for multimedia applications.

MPEG Gives excellent compression with little loss in quality of the video. MPEG support three types of data - video, audio and streaming. There are a number of standards: among them there are two flavors of MPEG available today. MPEG-1 was designed to provide VHS video quality and CD audio quality at a combined data rate of 150 kilobytes per second. MPEG-1 is displayed at 30 frames per second in a frame that is 352x240 (horizontal x vertical) pixels in size. This allows relatively high quality video images to be stored in relatively small file sizes for playback across computer networks or CD-ROM delivery. MPEG-2 is the other side of the compression coin. It is a broadcast standard specifying a playback size of 720 x 480 pixels at 60 fields per second. Data rates can range from 2 to 10 megabits per second. This means large file sizes and data rates that require specialized hardware for playback. MPEG-2 is one of the core compression technologies for DVD. See the MPEG site for more information.

WMV This is Microsoft's new standard for audio and video which is closely tied with the Windows Operating System. The player is able to play Windows Media Video (.wmv) and Advanced Streaming Format (.asf) files, and also other formats such as QuickTime, AVI, MPEG and MP3. See the Windows Media site for more information.

RM/RMVB RealMedia provides one of the oldest and most widespread (85% of all web-accessing computers have RealPlayer installed) Web delivery formats. The RealMedia files (.rm) can be viewed using RealPlayer 3 and above. For more information see the RealNetworks site and their user information site.

MOV MOV is a file extension for QuickTime Video Clip. QuickTime is a video and animation system developed by Apple Computer. QuickTime is built into the Macintosh operating system and is used by most Mac applications that include video or animation. PCs can also run files in QuickTime format, but they require a special QuickTime driver. QuickTime supports most encoding formats, including Cinepak, JPEG, and MPEG. QuickTime is competing with a number of other standards, including AVI and ActiveMovie. For more information see the Apple site and their Support page.

What is bitrate?

Bitrate very often used when speaking of video or audio quality and file size -- defines how much physical space one second of audio or video takes in bits (note: not in bytes). The higher the bitrate, the more times per second the original sound is sampled, thus yielding a more faithful reproduction and better sound. When choosing an MP3, weigh the advantage of a higher bitrate against the size of the file. Generally speaking, a bitrate of 128 kbps or higher will provide satisfactory sound quality.

Constant Bit Rate (CBR) encoding maintains the same bitrate throughout an encoded file.

Variable Bit Rate (VBR) is an MP3 encoding method that's used when file size is not an issue. Unfortunately Video Convert/Split/Merge Studio decodes VBR but doesn't encode it.

Selecting the proper bit rate for your projects depends on the playback target: if you're making a VCD for playback on a DVD player, the video must be exactly 1150 Kbps and the audio 224 Kbps.