Help Lots of issues... (pebcak errors mostly)

[eyeteeth]

I've messed with settings and files for hours and have run out of time... so I'm looking for some assistence.

I've tried different "versions" of the same file... toms of settings... and only came remotely close to getting it to work once.

Backround:
I have a Mustek PVR-A1 with a SD card that I use with a helmetcam to record A/V of my racing or practicing.
Every now and then I get some good footage, and want to put it onto a DVD. (Using IMovie for editing.) The problem, is the Mustek records to ASF format. In the past I went through a bnch of time consuming stages on a PC, then transferred to my Mac... then did more stuff to finally get it to burn to DVD. My Utopia, would be to simply convert the ASF on the Mac to smething iMovie can make sense of.

Current:
Started off nothing was recognized, but it would encode the video... no audio... then I finally got one with audio, but it was only 1/3rd of the actual footage. Now... it recignizes the info in the file, but i keep getting Zero kb files. One or two have been a couple MB's, but completely unreadible.

I'm pretty sure it will do what I want it too... I've just can't get it to work. I've tried converting to .MOV, .MP4, .DV, .Divx... i've tried more codecs then I care to try and type... and more audio encoders than i've heard of... I've tried the "Quick Presets" and I've tried editing them... i've also been searching the forum for hours... I just have no more time.

Here is the beginning & End of one of the Process information logs. They're prett long so i don't want to include the whole thing. They get repetative int he middle.
----------
FFmpeg version CVS, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
Fri Jul 13 22:18:35 EDT 2007
Mac OSX universal build for ffmpegX
libavutil version: 49.0.0
libavcodec version: 51.9.0
libavformat version: 50.4.0
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf bad header 11 at:16385
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 5
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 57
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 69
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 11
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0

...

[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf bad header 11 at:29425665
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 30
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 52
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 125
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 41
[asf @ 0x4701fc]ff asf skip 0 0
Input #0, asf, from '/Volumes/WD Passport/Grattan Helmetcam/New Folder/IMAG0001.ASF':
Duration: 00:01:13.2, start: 3.000000, bitrate: 3218 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: adpcm_ima_wav, 24000 Hz, mono, 96 kb/s
Stream #0.1, 1000.00 fps(r): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 320x240
Codec type mismatch for mapping #0.0 -> #0.0
--------------

A number of them list codec mismatch... can't figure out what will work. They do play in VLC just fine.

System is a Mac G5 Dual 2.7 ghz, 1 GB of memory, lots of HDD space. OS 10.4 Quicktime v7.1.6 Just downloaded ffmpeqx v 0.0.9xr2 from the website that lead me here.

If someone is bored... and interested in playing with a small file, I have uploaded one to a web site. Apprpx 28MB & a little over a minute long.

http://www.undergroundstudios.com/eyeteeth/IMAG0001.ASF

The main one I am currently interested in is 37 minutes long, 800+ MB.

Any assistence, anyone is willing to offer would be appreciated. I am heading out of town first thing in the morning, so I won't be able to answer any followup questions until late Sunday.

Thank-you

[Case]

It seems QuickTime has a hard time decoding your sample video, and ffmpeg does even worse. However, VLC plays it fine and so does MPlayer.
What you could do, is to convert your .asf first to H.264 .mp4 using the mencoder engine.
Note that the framerate is not well detected by ffmpegX, so force it to 29.97 fps. You could boost the bitrate a bit, so you won't loose to much quality because of the two encodings.
If your source has mono audio, you ought to set the target to mono as well.
Again, to preserve as much quality as possible, you could lower the Qmin value a bit.
Encode.
Then use that output to convert to DV, DVD or whatever you need.

[eyeteeth]

Excellent,

Thanks for teh advice I will give it a shot. It would sure be nice to do it in one pass. but if this works, it would at least be an improvement.