Split WMV File on Time Code Breaks

[DRobison]

I have a collection of 60 minute WMV files. I want to split them based on time code breaks and have the starting time code written as part of the file name (preferably in a form that sorts chronologically when viewed in Windows Explorer).

For example, if I have FileA.wmv containing three video segments, the program would create three new files with names containing the date and time (e.g., yyyy_mm_dd hh_mm_ss):
FileA_1 2006_01_30 14_22_07.wmv
FileA_2 2006_01_30 14_31_25.wmv
FileA_3 2006_01_30 14_47_18.wmv

Does anyone know of software that will do this in one step, or two programs (one for splitting and one for setting the file name) that accomplish the same thing? I need the program(s) to work automatically and quickly, so they need not do any video conversion.

I have tried many, many programs already and they either do not read WMV, they don't use the time code for splitting, they require the split points to be set manually, or they operate very slowly.

All of my Internet searches have come up empty.

The files were created with Microsoft Movie Maker from a Digital 8 camcorder.

All advice will be greatly appreciated!

[mikiem]

Guess would be to look at windows media encoder stuff -- think you might be able to get something working using scripting, possibly using remote admin end of things, but might be able to do it using cli wmencoder9?

Would likely be helpful to go thru the wmedia sdks for info & samples. If you keep the profile exactly the same, should be no re-encoding.

Might find something searching for older wmv apps -- there were quite a few 3rd party front ends available for earlier versions of wmv that should still work. Might be able to script in a batch file using something as simple as asfchop?

[DRobison]

Your suggestion to look at asfchop eventually pointed me back to the Windows Media apps. According to Microsoft, ASF Chop is now part of the Windows Media File Editor. This app allows me to see the the video segments. If I save the header, I get a TXT file with each segment listed along with its time code. I can write a program to convert this to a batch file. I just need a splitter than I can drive via the batch file. Do you know of any?

I have downloaded the Windows Media Encoder SDK and will be digging deeper into it to see what's in there.

I have a copy of DVDate, which puts date/time stamps into the file name. Unfortuantely it only works with AVI.

Thanks MikieM for giving me some hope again.

[mikiem]

ASFChop & some of the older wmedia stuff might have more command line options, and be easier to work with using scripting -- I really haven't played that much with the newer versions to see when/where you have CLI as an option. AFAIK the older stuff, like the wmedia 7 resource kit still work, & the sdk's include some command line prog. as well as source code.

I think what you want to do should be possible because Microsoft went a fair distance trying to make sure the entire process could be handled in an automated or production environment. There's just not a lot of example info around on that end of things as it hasn't IMO caught on as Microsoft had hoped.

[DRobison]

Some progress! I used the Windows Media File Editor to save the header file, which lists all of the segments, each one's time code, and each one's start time relative to the beginning of the video. I manually created a Windows batch file that uses ASFChop (an older, non-GUI version) to extract segments and output a file with a name that includes the time code and a sequence number. The batch file also records a log file that can be used to ensure that everything worked correctly. The batch file took about 20 minutes to chop 60 minutes of video into 40 segments. I have a 3.0 GHz processor with 1GB RAM, but the machine was only about 16% busy.

The only problem is that the time code breaks have a resolution in milliseconds and ASFChop accepts just 0.1 second resolution. So the segment start times in my batch file are off by a little bit. ASFChop recognizes that the start time isn't at a key frame so it adds frames as needed. This means that the transition points will be jerky if I join all the files back together in my editor. While I can live with this, it would be so much nicer if there was a tool that would split my files based on time code breaks.

Creating the batch file took about an hour (including time to dig out my old DOS 5 manuals) so I plan to write a simple VB application to do it automatically.

The bottom line is that I'm close to having an acceptable solution that won't take too much of my time. Thanks much!