WMV file cannot fast-forward

[joelson]

Hi!

I've download a WMV file. It seems to be OK. However, in any viewer, it won't let me fast-forward the video. It means that I have to watch the whole movie, so I can see a specific scene.

I've tried to convert to another format. I tried VirtualDub, but it says it contains ASF protected format. TMPGEnc also can't do it (it just converts the first scene).

Can anybody help me?

Thanks in advance!

[guns1inger]

I have never seen a WMV file that would FF. I just drag with the cursor as needed.

Look in the virtualdub tools section of the Tools menu and you should find an old version of Vdub that does handle asf files.

[joelson]

guns1inger: The software won't let me even drag with the cursor!! It seems to be disabled!

[jimmalenko]

Sounds like an indexing problem to me. Maybe try ASFTools and do a basic repair. Windows Movie Maker can reconvert to WMV (and should fix the indexing) or can convert to DV-AVI, which then should be better received by almost every other conversion software out there.

[verchern]

The problem is with indexing. You can download Windows Media Encoder for free from Microsoft and have it convert the file. This only takes a couple seconds and works great. You can probably also use Windows Movie Maker but I have not tried it. You would have to import the video and go through the process of creating a new video if you did it this way.
1. Right click on your video file and look at properties, then summary tab
2. Take note of your bit rate, size etc (you can keep this window open)
3. Open Windows Media Encoder
4. Choose "Convert a file"
5. Choose the file you want to convert and new file name
6. Look through the Content Distribution tab and determine what size video output you want. I try to use the same as the original file to maximize speed.
7. Finish the process and output the new video file.