I want to convert those BMWFilms to VCD to keep for later...

[kschang]

This is legal as they DO allow download of those films... And my computer seems to be a bit slow playing those fancy QuickTimes.

Does any one have a good way of converting those MOVs into AVIs or MPGs? I read somewhere that RadTools can convert, but when I tried it I keep getting "audio error" and I got no output at all.

Do I need QTPro to convert it?

[easydvd]

TMPG will do a mov-->mpg conversion with the QT plugin

[easydvd]

I just saw part of a commercial for those same films.......could you put up a link? I want those too!!

[mortisvanberg]

Good luck with the conversion. I tried it a while back and TMPG kept crashing. I have the first series on DVD. I'll rip the dvd and let you know when I post it.

[kschang]

I just saw part of a commercial for those same films.......could you put up a link? I want those too!!

bmwfilms.com, of course... They just started the second season with a short film by John Woo... Yes, the master himself.

The first season featured works by Ang Lee, John Frankenheimer, and even Guy Ritchie (guest appearance by his wife!)

[0 kewl]

Just in case somebody is wondering what is BMWFilms go here:

http://www.bmwfilms.com/clap.asp?template=international&country=&film=

Personally, i love them - pretty cool.

[kschang]

TMPG will do a mov-->mpg conversion with the QT plugin

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I note a caveat though... The author of the plugin only claims QT4 compatibility. Still, it's worth a try.

Right now I'm testing TMPG on a trailer I got... of a film that's older than I am. ;-D Any one remember "Run Silent, Run Deep"? Starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster?

[kschang]

Update:

No go here. I think this season 2 film has a built-in "skin" for the player, and all the QTplug-in sees is the skin and its animation, not the actual film itself.

I tried going into TMPG and set the range, but no go there either. All it sees is the skin, not the film behind it.

Any one wants to give it a try, go to bmwfilms.com, and download the first film, Hostage, which should be Hostage_EFE.zip file, which unzips into .MOV QT file.

Maybe I'll try my season 1 films... Hmmm...

[kschang]

Any other ideas?

[catmando]

download the window media file not the qt file

[DigiToast]

--message deleted by digitoast--

[DigiToast]

Hey everyone, I've found a working solution to converting the enhanced films. =)

Here's how to do it:

1.) Go to Apple's site and download the free utility called Dumpster.
2.) Make a backup of your .mov file so you don't screw it up (Just a suggestion)
3.) Open up Dumpster and drag the .mov into the window.
4.) Double click on the following items: 'moov', 'udta', and then 'nsav'.
5.) Select "unknown data:" that's inside of 'nsav' and change all three of the values to all zeros ($00000000)
6.) Hit apply and close the program.
7.) You can now open up the .mov file inside of Quicktime Pro and all of the Save/SaveAs/Export/etc options will be unlocked. Export the .mov to some format that you'd like to work with (ie: AVI) and encode it.

Note: I've only tried this on Hostage_EFE, but it should work on all the other films.. at least I hope so =)

Edit: Forgot to add that when I opened up the movie in Quicktime Pro then I clicked play to bring up the black movie skin + movie, hit pause, and then went to export it all. Not sure if it makes a difference but figured I'd post this in case problems come up from not doing these steps.

[ToeCutter]

Hey everyone, I've found a working solution to converting the enhanced films. =)

Here's how to do it:

1.) Go to Apple's site and download the free utility called Dumpster.
2.) Make a backup of your .mov file so you don't screw it up (Just a suggestion)
3.) Open up Dumpster and drag the .mov into the window.
4.) Double click on the following items: 'moov', 'udta', and then 'nsav'.
5.) Select "unknown data:" that's inside of 'nsav' and change all three of the values to all zeros ($00000000)
6.) Hit apply and close the program.
7.) You can now open up the .mov file inside of Quicktime Pro and all of the Save/SaveAs/Export/etc options will be unlocked. Export the .mov to some format that you'd like to work with (ie: AVI) and encode it.

Note: I've only tried this on Hostage_EFE, but it should work on all the other films.. at least I hope so =)

Great work, DigiToast!

I read a similar post, but it didn't work. This, however, does work.

One more thing: do you know which variables to change in order to allow the disabling of certain tracks? By deleting certain tracks, we can get rid of the nasty player "frame" and additional graphics that are crashing all the extraction/encoder apps. You can do this with "Hostage" but not "Ticker", as the track selections are greyed out. I'll play around to see what I can come up with.

Again, great work. MANY have been trying to accomplish this.

[DigiToast]

I don't know how to disable any tracks =(. I spent about 10 minutes playing around and said screw it and exported the thing with the skin. What I'm doing is just cutting out the extra stuff in the movie through an editor. The settings I've figured out are that: the dv export is 779x536, and to get it to the original 720x300 movie only size, you cut the following amount of pixels off each side:
left - 32
right - 27
top - 52
bottom - 184
these are rough (as premiere halved my 779x536 preview window so I couldn't see it all).. but I don't think I'll be missing a line or two if anything does get cut off.

[kschang]

Thanks to digiToast... I got the AVI out, and it's only like 150 megs each, not too much larger than the QT6 file itself. Though it SURE took the PC a LONG TIME to make that AVI file! (on my slow PC, it took several HOURS)

Then I went into TMPGEnc and engaged the wizard to do trimming and centering and so on. I tried 2 separate settings (tried noise reduction, best search for scene change, etc.) The end result is a prefectly respectable VCD... Suitable for viewing on TV!

Now I just have to find my archive of season 1 films...