Converting Window Movie Maker files????

[Bstansbury]

It seems that this time of day, all of the "How To" sections and the "Tools" section are off line. Is this the time when they do Maintenance.???

Anyway, I'm finding that Window Movie Maker is a really easy to use editing tool. If you import a MPEG file, it will automatically split it into "Clip', which are basically just scene changes. This is great for my 8mm video data. Then the editing tools to view, select, split, add, delete, etc. are great.

Now the probem is,... is will only say the output of the movie in MSWDM format. So the question is, are there program around that will convert the edited file back to MPEG.

I've tried to use Ulead VideoStudio 5.0 but it is so complex it is very hard to use. The help files give you every piece of information about what every button or menu does in the program,... but there is no "How to" anywhere that shows what steps you have to go through to edit.

I've seen several post on this forum and the editing forum about the people that are trying to use TMPGen for editing,... and Idon't even want to go there,... it does not sound like fun.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[buzzinhornets]

I pretty sure, WinMovie Maker creates .wmv files which are encoded in the WMV1 or WMV2 codec. Here are instructions and links to every piece of software you need to convert this b1tchy high security video files back to .avi format

If you follow them word for word they are simple instructions!

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

[Big_Jit]

Just get a little proggy called GraphEdit and follow these steps:

: 1) Use the File->RenderFile menu option to load in a file.

: 2) Remove the last two "filters" (or software components) from the graph. These default to your sound card driver and your video card driver. We don't want that, we want to convert to a different file format.

: We'll do AVI, because that's what you'll want if you're using AVI editors to edit the movie.

: 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

: 4) Insert a new filter (Graph->InsertFilters) called "AVI Mux" from the DirectShow filters section

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

: 6) Link XForm Out of Windows Media Audio Decoder to Input 1 of AVI Mux

: 7) Link ASF ICM Out to Input 2 of AVI Mux.

: 8) 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)

: 10) Press the play button

: 11) 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)

But Beware that the File Size is gonna be Huge because it outputs Uncompressed Video (MS-YYUV).

Hope This Helps !...

[Bstansbury]

Sorry guys,...

I was asking about MPEG conversion. Windows Movie Maker reads in the MPEG-1 file in VCD format. Then, after editing and clipping out the bad clips, it will save it in MWWdm format. I need to convert this file. Since is it a very standard Windows format, I was thinking that someone had some software to convert it back to MPG.

If I go back to AVI, I have to recompress all over again and this has got to introduce all kinds of errors.

[Big_Jit]

You can Use TMPGEnc to Edit MPEG Files and you don't need to re-encode them.

[Briggs]

Just to share my li'l bit experience in Windows Movie Maker. I had a few mpeg movies done in Windows Movie Maker itself but i have no problem converting it to mpeg using TMPGEnc conversion

Just to confirm with you the format before the conversion was *.WMV

Seriously, i spent quite sometime to find for the tools that realy converts my stuffs to mpeg and through the help of VCDHELP.COM i found TMPGEnc really useful, it really helps.



Briggs

========================

Sorry guys,...

I was asking about MPEG conversion. Windows Movie Maker reads in the MPEG-1 file in VCD format. Then, after editing and clipping out the bad clips, it will save it in MWWdm format. I need to convert this file. Since is it a very standard Windows format, I was thinking that someone had some software to convert it back to MPG.

If I go back to AVI, I have to recompress all over again and this has got to introduce all kinds of errors.