How to create great Windows DreamScene video wallpapers

If you’re running Windows Vista Ultimate edition, no doubt you’re already aware of the fantastic Ultimate Extra that is Windows® DreamScene™. DreamScene enables you to run full screen video as your desktop background – whether it’s video that you downloaded as an Ultimate Extra or video you’ve shot and edited yourself.

So what do you need to know before you make your video wallpaper? We caught up with Mitch Gatchalian, Senior Product Manager for Windows Vista Ultimate, who talked us through various aspects of Windows DreamScene .

Windows Vista Magazine: What is the optimum file size for a video for DreamScene?

Mitch: DreamScene will play any MPEG1, MPEG2 or WMV file all the way to HD quality. This means that DreamScene will allow you to play very high resolution videos in these formats behind the desktop. We have seen the best results using subtly looped videos of about half a minute in length.

Remember that DreamScene will not get in the way of productivity and in instances where bandwidth is critical, it will intelligently pause playback to allow data to have priority over the pipe. (For example, you can get a still image of the video if you select Desktop Background in the Remote Desktop experience tab).

MPEG files 200MB or less will be cached in system memory to reduce disk activity. Media files larger than 200MB will be read from the disk, so there will be some minor difference in performance if the files get large. WMVs are always read from disk. So, for optimum performance, select a video file in MPG format less than 200MB in size.

The higher-resolution the video, the more work the CPU will have to do to decode it. So while we do support, say, great-looking 1080p, it’s going to take-up more CPU time than, say, a 720p video.

We have an excellent write-up on content creation, rendering and encoding written by Alex Kipman, Group Program Manager on the Windows Vista Ultimate team. You can find his blog entry here.

Windows Vista Magazine: Are there any performance limitations such as time limits on the length of movie?

Mitch: There are no time limits in terms of the length of movies DreamScene will play.

Windows Vista Magazine: What is the optimum resolution for the DreamScene content?

Mitch: It will vary. While low-res videos may not look good if scaled to a large display, higher res videos take more processing time, and on a smaller display may not always yield big noticeable results.

Windows Vista Magazine: Do you plan to post any hardware (eg graphics cards) recommendations for running DreamScene?

Mitch: Yes, we plan to blog about good configurations we have seen which have run DreamScene with exceptionally good performance. Continue to monitor www.windowsultimate.com for insights coming from the Ultimate team about how to make the most of your Windows Vista Ultimate based PC.

Windows Vista Magazine: In running DreamScene, is there any impact to overall system performance over time?

Mitch: There is obviously some processing required to display the video. How much depends on the video itself, the hardware in the PC and the device drivers. The DreamScene videos that we provide have been tuned to minimize impact on system performance while still looking good even on a 30” display. We’ve also built smarts into the system so that we can pause DreamScene when necessary, like when a window is maximized. When the PC becomes busy, DreamScene will start “dropping frames” if resources becomes scarce to allow other processes to run uninterrupted and to keep the desktop as responsive as possible. The user can also manually pause DreamScene using the desktop context menu if they need to temporarily reduce the overhead to their system.

Dreamscene will also gracefully pause when other applications maximize their window, or if the computer is using Network Projection or being accessed by Remote Desktop.