14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft will fix a problem impacting the high end edition of the latest iteration of its Windows client which prevents the in-box VC-1 Video encoder codec to leverage all the CPU cores of a multicore system. The Redmond company revealed that it is aware of the issue reported by customers running the Ultimate edition of Windows 7, and that a fix is coming. However, for the time being affected users will only have to exercise their patience, as not only they won’t be able to access and update to resolve the issue, but not even a hotfix or a workaround.
Affected customers are running systems with 3 and 6-core systems with Windows 7 RTM Ultimate, and will notice that performance is lagging in relation to video content that requires VC-1. “Microsoft's in-the-box VC-1 video encoder in Windows 7 does not utilize all cores to achieve optimal video performance during video playback and editing. Microsoft is aware that this is a known issue for all versions of Windows 7 and is working on it for a future release,” the Redmond company revealed.
VC-1, a video codec specification standardized by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is included by default into Windows 7. In fact, the Redmond company has implemented VC-1 ahead of the delivery of Windows Vista’s successor as the Microsoft Windows Media Video (WMV) 9, back in 2007.
“The VC-1 codec is designed to achieve state-of-the-art compressed video quality at bit rates that may range from very low to very high. The codec can easily handle 1920 pixel × 1080 pixel presentation at 6 to 30 megabits per second (Mbps) for high-definition video. VC-1 is capable of higher resolutions such as 2048 pixels × 1536 pixels for digital cinema, and of a maximum bit rate of 135 Mbps. An example of very low bit rate video would be 160 pixel × 120 pixel presentation at 10 kilobits per second (Kbps) for modem applications,” Microsoft stated. “The basic functionality of VC-1 involves a block-based motion compensation and spatial transform scheme similar to that used in other video compression standards since MPEG-1 and H.261.”