First Time Poster Need Serious Help

[Tarrant]

Hey guys, I've got a seemingly small problem here that seems impossible to fix. Here's my tale of woe...

I've got a handful of .asf files ranging from 33-400MB. All of them play just fine on Win Media Player 8 but none of them will track...meaning I can't fast forward. The first thing I did was try and use VDub 1.3c to convert them to .avi. When I did, I'd always get the "Couldn't locate decompressor for format "WMV2" (unknown)". Okay, I then tried using ASFTools to "repair" the files. While it went thru the complete repair routine, VDub still gave me the same error.

Next I tried TMPGEnc. It would work but would never complete the entire conversion process because it would lock up 10 or so minutes into the conversion. Using GraphEdit, I was able to decompress(?) the file but the resulting size was just too big. For example, it made a 33MB .asf into a 3GB .avi. That's just too big to keep around on a drive.

Surely there has to be a way to convert these things into a manageable .avi or .mpeg. To be honest, I'd settle for a .asf file that would simply track thru the entire movie. Any ideas or recommendation would be great. Thx in advance!!

Tarrant

[Zap2]

I'm interested to know how you did that with Graphedit... But once you got it to an avi, you should be able to run that through TMPGEnc, then delete it and keep the smaller mpg.

The main problem with asf decoding is the audio, so one thing I do is simply decode the video to m1v with tmpg, then get as much as the audio I can to decode with tmpg before the eventual freeze. I then use TotalRecorder to record the audio while playing the file, and sync it up with the clip that tmpg was able to extract, and multiplex it in with the movie.

[Tarrant]

Sure. Here are the instructions I dug up (don't remember where) on using GraphEdit...

1) Use the File > RenderFile option and choose your ASF file (can use WMV, etc)

2) The default graph is built for you

3) Delete any filters after (but not including) the Windows Media Audio Decoder filter

4) Delete any filters after (but not including) the ASF ICM Handler filter

5) Insert a new filter (Graph > InsertFilters) called "AVI MUX" from the DirectShow filters section

6) Link the ASF ACM Out to XForm In of Windows Media Audio Decoder

7) Link XForm Out of Windows Media Audio Decoder to Input 1 of AVI MUX

Insert a new filter called "File Writer" from DirectShow section and choose a file name

9) Link the AVI Out of AVI MUX to the In of your file writer

10) Right-click the AVI MUX filter and choose Properties

11) Choose the Full option of the INterleaving section and click OK (this makes the sound and video match up and is the whole point of the AVI format)

12) Press the play button

13) Wait until the play button is active again - this means the thing is finished (you can right-click on AVI MUX and look at the Current Position and Duration count to see how far in seconds the conversion has progressed during the conversion)
------------------

While this worked the file size was immense...on the order of 100 times the size of the original...WOW. I'll try your recommendation with TMPGEnc and see what happens. Thx for your reply and I'll post here again when I've seen if it works.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tarrant on 2001-12-31 19:09:48 ]</font>

[AiShaolinQuan]

Uh, this may have nothing to do with the file, and you shouldn't need to convert it. I had that problem too, but it turns out it isn't anything to do with the file, but with WMP. Anything above WMP6.x won't allow you to track asf files, so you have to open it with the default WMP on the computer (namely right click on it and "open with" and choose the older version that comes with windows rather than the most recent). Hopefully it works for you, it does for me, and it'll save you time on all the stuff you're going thru.

[Tarrant]

I'm going to have to beg to differ with that. I've got several .asf files that track just fine in Windows Media Player 8. Since I'm using WinXP Pro, the only Media Player that is present is the default which is 8. On some .asf files, I was able to make them seekable by running them thru the ASFTools program. However, these somehow someway have a type of WMV encoding embedded in them. At least that's what the error message from VDub is leading me to believe.

BTW, I just tried my experiment by running a 33MB .asf file thru GraphEdit. The resultant .avi file was just over 3GB. I then ran it thru TMPGEnc and the .mpg file it produced was 311MB. Considering that some of the .asf files I'm having trouble with are 400MB, converting them using this method isn't practical for two reasons. One, the temporary .avi file would be astronomical in size. And two, while the .mpg file would be smaller, it would still be over 2-3GB. That's just too big. There has to be a better way to do this. Any more ideas??

[baz00ie]

Hey mon,
If you're using Win 95/98 and you wish to convert "*.asf" or "*.wmv" files (WMV1 and WMV2 format) into a workable format, check out my website... there are easy to follow instructions on how to do this.

http://www.angelfire.com/film/baz00ie/

Later
baz

[TurboRunner]

Hi,

Maybe follows the instruction on baz00ie site to convert to avi and then convert it to Divx which is a higher compression than mpeg1 or 2 but is definatly heaps smaller and is better than .ASF or .rm. other wise it might be best to leave it in the format it's in.

[Tarrant]

baz00ie - Thx for the link. The only problem with doing it that way is the size of the .avi file that is produced. The 33MB .asf file I converted came out to just over 3GB. I shutter to think what the .avi file size would be with my 400MB .asf files. All things remaining equal, it would probably be 36GB and I don't have a hdd I can store that on...even temporarily. But, I'll see what I can do. If I could manage it, TurboRunner might have a good idea about the Divx conversion.

In the meantime, I've been playing around with this GraphEdit program. I'm convinced that this is the solution to my problem and, from other posts I've read in this forum, could most likely help out several other people too. The problem is that it's complicated for those of us who know nothing about video/audio encoding and decoding as it pertains to being written and extracted out of a file. The simple fact that it will wipe out the .wmv coding in my files and produce "raw footage" is remarkable. And it will probably re-encode as well if I only knew how to use the filters.

If I figure this out I'll be sure and post a follow-up. Thx for all the help here guys. If anyone can think of something else, please me/us know!

Tarrant