asf problems

[highschoolfootballhero]

Unfortunately some of my favorite music vids are in asf format. They are the only ones that I can not convert to mpg. TMPGEnc. freezes shortly after encoding begins. By reading an "HOW TO" on this site it told me that extracting the audio will fix this problem. I have the correct version of VirtualDub that will open these asf files but it says, "ACM failed to suggest audio decompression format". I can hear the audio just fine though when playing on my computer. Can someone please help?

[TurboGen]

I had a very similar problem to this once. It turned out that the file wasn't strictly an 'asf' format but in fact a 'wmf' format that has been renamed to asf. The two encoding protocols are slightly different and virtualdub could only handle the true asf version. It appears to be playing fine when played back on your pc 'cause windows won't disitinguish the two formats it just gets media player to play the file as the default playback medium for both asf and wmf formats.

I solved this issue by using the Microsoft Media Encoder (it's free to download from their website and actually a rather useful tool). I then re-encoded it without compression (sounds silly, but your effectively extracting back to an avi file). I then used this large file for converting to whichever format I want with whichever tool I choose.

Yes, it's a long way around and you risk loss of quality, but I haven't found a better way of managing true 'wmf' format files as yet.

[Corta2863]

Make sure you have the SMR codec installed, it is availible in the tools section of this site. That should allow you to open your .asf flawlessly. I have found it is quicker to frameserve an .asf in virtual dub to tmpgenc, instead of just opening it in tmpgenc. Try frameserving to virtual dub first, see if it works then. Than try the other method you mentioned.
Hopes this helps!!!

Corta2863

[highschoolfootballhero]

thx for your help, the smr codec is installed on my comp. I am going to try the microsoft product you suggested, and make a large avi file w/ uncompressed audio, hopefully that will work.

[buzzinhornets]

I'm sure that your file is in fact a WMV1 or WMV2 file just named .asf... which kinda b1tchy... this has saved many useless .wmv files for me... it works evertime, just is a little slow:


How to convert ASF/WMV files to AVI.
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OK, first let me say that this method is a bit of a pain in the butt, is not user friendly, and does require that you have the registered version of at least one program. Having said that, this method will allow you to make a flawless( as much as possible ) conversion from an asf/wmv directly to avi even if the file is encoded with the WMV1 or WMV2 codec.

First we'll start with what you'll need.

1)GraphEdit : get it here http://www.dvd-digest.net/downloads/files/encode/graphedit.zip
2)Imedia AVI_renderer : http://www.divx-digest.com/software/mpeg2avi_imedia.html
3)AsfTools : www.geocities.com/myasftools/
4)A video to work with, for this example I'll use the movie trailer of Black Hawk Down. I used StreamBoxVCR and downloaded it from here mms://agency2wm.fplive.net/agency/2/2/film/blackhawkdown/trailer_2/bhd_trailer2_300k.asf
5)Registered version of MotionPerfect : http://www.motionperfect.com/

OR YOU COULD GET THEM AT THIS YAHOO GROUP (and any necessary patches) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buzzinhornetz2002_2/files

First we're going to need to get some essential information from the asf file. Namely, the frame rate and the number of frames in the file. Open your downloaded file in asftools and click on the Advanced button. Click on the "Convert to AVI" tab, make sure timing method is set to Minimum extra frames, and click on Convert. When the conversion is finished, note the "frame rate" which can be read at the field: "Frame/Sec".
and number of frames in asf/wmv file which is: (Total frames shown in message window) minus (number of frames added for sync. also shown in message window)
Our example has 4491 frames and runs at 29.966fps. You can now delete the avi file.

Before we go any further, you will need to have a registered version Motion Perfect installed, and you will need to install the AVI_renderer filter. You should have downloaded a file called i-media_mpeg2avi.zip, in this zip is a file called AVI_Renderer.ax, extract it to the directory of your choice, just rember where you extracted it to. Now click on Start->Run, in the box type in regsvr32 and then the path to AVI_Renderer.ax in quotes. So, if you extracted it to c:\filters, you should type in : regsvr32 "c:\filters\AVI_Renderer.ax" . Click OK and you should get a message that the filter registation succeded.

Now we are ready to build our filter graph and start out conversion. Open GraphEdit, click on File->Render Media File, and select your downloaded asf file ( bhd_trailer2_300k.asf in our example ). Once the file is loaded, you will see the filter graph that GraphEdit created. Delete both the Video Renderer, and Default Directsound Device filters. Next, click on Graph->Insert Filters, when the window comes up, expand the DirectShow Filters category. Add a Mediamend ( you will not see this if you do not have motion perfect installed ) filter and an I-Media AVI Renderer filter. In the dialog that appears choose custom for frame rate. To get a frame rate of 29.966fps set the rate to 29966 and the scale to 1000. Click OK then choose an output file name. Now Right-click on the Mediamend filter and select properties, set playback time to 1, set frame rate to 29.966 and set interpolation mode to 0. Now connect the output of Windows Media Video Decoder to the Mediamend filter. Connect the Mediamend filter to the video input of the AVI_Renderer. Connect the Windows Media Audio Decoder to the Audio input of the AVI_Renderer. Check the Show frames box on the AVI_Renderer window. Finally press the play button on the toolbar. A dialog will appear letting you choose the codec you want to use. Your AVI should now be encoding. Once you see in the AVI_Renderer status box that your video is done encoding close graphedit.

You're done. Yeah. You should now be able to play your new avi file.

Just a couple of final word here: When VirtualDub 2 is released, this will probably all be a mute point in that VirtualDub 2 will be DirectShow based and should therefore be able to open and convert asf/wmv files natively. Also I should point out that there are probably several other methods for doing this with GraphEdit. This is just my method. It works for me.

by CHICKEN SCROTUM
edited by BUZZINHORNETS