Ben Waggoner, Program Manager, Microsoft Codec Team

For years, Ben Waggoner's been sharing his expertise on video codecs with the streaming industry. These days, he's working on Windows Media, and here he provides the lowdown on the latest developments in Microsoft's audio and video codecs.

Listen to our interview with Ben here.

More information on the codecs Ben discusses can be found at the following links:

Official descriptions of the Advanced Settings, including registry keys.

WMCmd:This utility from Microsoft’s Alex Zambelli is a command-line encoder for WMV that exposes all the advanced settings.

Advanced Settings Editor: This utility provides a nifty GUI for setting the registry keys. Download the most recent "bin" version of "WMV9ASE"

Windows Media Player 11: Installing Windows Media Player is the easiest way to get the new codecs installed. You can get it here (in Beta 2).

Windows Media Format SDK 11: The Format SDK is what tool vendors use to build WMV export to their products, and we’ve recently released a new version to sync with the new features of Windows Media Player 11. This will let you access the new WMV and WMA 10 Pro codecs without installing the new Media Player.