ipad Player For asf Video

[oldtrarunner]

I need to play a video in asf format on an ipad. Can anyone recommend a free player?

I’ve tried the following and none of them work (various progress bar, navigation, seek, synchronization, and rendering problems).

1) MolyPlayer HD
2) OPlayer HD
3) VideoStream Free
4) 8player
5) RockPlayer2

The files I’m using are admittedly a bit unusual. They start out as wmv files created by an IBM SmartCloud meeting. They are then trimmed using asfbin to create the asf. They play fine in Windows Media Player and MPC-HC.

I’ve uploaded a sample file for you to see what I‘m up against.

Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

I don't have an ipad, but I would try VLC

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html
https://itunes.apple.com/app/vlc-ios/id650377962

[smrpix]

Does the ipad even recognize the asf file? How are you loading it on there?

[oldtrarunner]

poisondeathray: VLC? I guess it's worth a try. VLC does not play the files well on Windows (audio is good but video is not always current) but maybe the iOS version will work better.

smrpix: I'm naively going to the IBM SmartCloud interface for accessing the video and tapping it. The SmartCloud does a download and gives the video to a player. I don't know how the SmartCloud chooses a player but I've only ever had one loaded at a time, so I've been able to see how each works.

Thanks. I'll post back regarding VLC.

[poisondeathray]

It's either that or one of the mplayer GUIs for OSX (MPlayer OSX Extended, MPlayerX) ,not sure how well they run on ipad

[transporterfan]

Video to Video Converter can convert them using an ipad preset in about 12-15 minutes.
You might find that easier than trying to find a compatible player.

[smrpix]

I agree with transporterfan. You're going to have to convert the asf to something useful whether you're hosting it locally on the ipad or on a streaming site like vimeo or YouTube. Then you can play it with either the built-in ipad player or a browser.

[oldtrarunner]

Thanks transporterfan and smrpix but conversion is not an option because the files become about 10 times larger making them unmanageable for our application.

[Baldrick]

Adjust the video and audio bitrate to get smaller size.

running time * bitrate = file size.

You will lose quality though.

[smrpix]

To summarize, you want to play asf on an ipad for free. You're trying to thread a pretty thin needle.

No more suggestions unfortunately, but I wish you well. Please report back if you find anything because it may be helpful to others.

[oldtrarunner]

Just to clarify the problem I'm trying to solve, let me explain.

We get a recording generated by an IBM SmartCloud Meeting in wmv format. We need to trim the start to remove time used to set up the meeting, etc. We use asfbin to do this for two reasons:

1) We do not have time to recode because we have a lot of videos to process. We get the videos around 7PM and need to have them turned around for the next morning.

2) The original files are vastly smaller than a recoded file (an order of magnitude).

Playing the resulting file on Windows works fine. We're looking for a solution to play these files on ipad as well. But any solution that involves recoding is not going to work for us.

I found that VLC for iOS played asf but had synchronization issues.

I also tried OPlayer HD Lite. It played the asf with proper synchronization but any sort of seek/time navigation did not work.

The seek/time navigation problems are a common theme with the iOS players (I've tried a bunch more). I assume this is because of the unusual frame rate in the video (check the actual frame locations with asfbin). But it is the unusual frame rate that makes the files so small. A double edged sword...

If any more iOS players come to mind that you've found to be particularly robust, please share them.

Thanks.

[smrpix]

That's understood.

There are a few players in the itunes app store that claim to play asf. They range from 99 cents to about $3.00. That seems inexpensive enough (to me) for you to test more of them out.

As I said, your requirements are threading a thin needle. Between ipad, no conversion, free, and perfect navigation, somethings probably going to have to give.

[poisondeathray]

How many of your issues are related to the non supported "WMVA" fourcc ? Your sample in this thread still uses it - did you not update the software yet ?
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/361823-Frame-Rate-Changed-When-Save-In-COPY-Mode

VLC has no problems with "normal" asf files cut from asfbin using wvc1, wmv3 , but something tells me even if recorded with the updated software the files will still have issues

[smrpix]

Wait, you can do a .mov version instead of asf? And it contains AVC instead of VC1? That sounds more promising for iOS. Can you post a sample?

[oldtrarunner]

Heh, let the abuse begin!

smrpix: I work for a large multi-national corporation. They decide the rules and, no matter how anal they may seem, "you will comply". As far as .mov, that's a whole other story. But the bottom line is we would need a free .mov trimming tool, and we've yet to find one. Can you recommend something I can try? It must not recode. We're also trying to get the "free" thing relaxed. Then we'd just use .mov and QT Pro to trim, which works fine for both Windows and iOS. Problem solved.

poisondeathray: It is not our SW that generates the wmv files, it is IBM's SW. And we've asked them to fix it but they refuse because they have a follow-on product where it is fixed. Unfortunately, the follow-on product does not satisfy our operational needs.

Feel my pain.

[poisondeathray]

1) We do not have time to recode because we have a lot of videos to process. We get the videos around 7PM and need to have them turned around for the next morning.

2) The original files are vastly smaller than a recoded file (an order of magnitude).

It doesn't take that much time to re-encode , and it can be semi-automated if you do it properly

Re-encoding it properly:
1) will reduce the filesize from the original

2) improve compatibility with all platforms and software - the example below plays & seeks properly in vlc, quicktime, mpchc, mplayer derivatives

3) is fast - doing it properly, there are only a few unique frames (1000's can be dropped) . For example , your 54min sample should encode in <1min on a modern computer

If you re-encode , you have many options to customize it however you want. For example, you can choose to increase/decrease the audio & video quality and filesize (eg. the re-encoded audio in this example uses aac 16kb/s (and the aac encoder quality isn't as good as other aac encoders, but you can increase the bitrate if you wanted)

In this example, I set "short" keyframe intervals so the seeking should be about 1min granularity intervals. If you decrease that (finer seeking, the filesize will increase as compression is more impaired)

I can write you a batch file if you want. So you would edit in asfbin as you normally would, then run the batch file - e.g. all files in a folder will be converted automatically

[qpskfec]

Heh, let the abuse begin!

smrpix: I work for a large multi-national corporation. They decide the rules and, no matter how anal they may seem, "you will comply". As far as .mov, that's a whole other story. But the bottom line is we would need a free .mov trimming tool, and we've yet to find one. Can you recommend something I can try? It must not recode. We're also trying to get the "free" thing relaxed. Then we'd just use .mov and QT Pro to trim, which works fine for both Windows and iOS. Problem solved.

Feel my pain.

Isn't Quicktime Pro $30? Your large multi-national won't spend $30? That is painful.

[oldtrarunner]

What you show is intriguing, poisondeathray!

Let me test the .mp4 on iOS and get back to you. If it works (and I have no reason to believe it won't), I'll be very interested in that batch file.

Just for the record, the file you started with was already processed by asfbin. But since it was just a trim, I would not expect the original file to behave any differently.

BTW - I do not need further compression beyond what I start with. I just have to make sure file size does not grow.

Thanks. I hope to report back soon.

[oldtrarunner]

The properly encoded file, test.mp4, did pretty well on iOS. With the native player used by IBM (a QT derivative?), there was no audio. But third party Apps played it very well. Had sync and time navigation!

Is there an additional tweak that would allow the video to be played without a third party App? I can try to determine exactly what is used natively if that would help. This may not be a deal breaker but I know my leader is not keen on needing a third party App.

Regardless, I'd be most grateful to get the script for doing the conversion. I can trade you a Perl script that will read contacts from the SmartCloud!

[poisondeathray]

No audio in the IBM player? AAC audio is pretty ubiquitous these days... even more common than MP3 now I would say . Find out what types of audio are supported in that player

Did you try mpegstreamclip for cutting MOV ?

Quicktime pro might be the better option - certainly faster so I would definitely consider that option. And although MOV can be problematic on PC, they will play in many players just fine




I used ffmpeg for this. You need a fairly new (within the last few months) binary . Windows binaries can be found here
http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/

Tell me what kind of options you want to customize (e.g. did you want finer seek granularity, did you want slightly better audio, did you want slightly better video quality, etc...) . You have a bit of "wiggle room" as the files should always be smaller than the original with these settings - provided the content is similar. The more complex (more different slides, maybe animations), the more bitrate will be required

In the second example "test2.mp4", I improved the seek granularity to 30seconds, and the filesize wasn't much larger (I also adjusted the IP ratio, because you're going to be using a lot of "I" frames for this, it will help reduce the filesize a bit)

The adjusted command line "prototype" for one file is like this: (I would test this out on some other samples first, before moving to batches, just to make sure everything is working ok)

ffmpeg -i input.asf -r 0.1 -c:v libx264 -crf 30 -g 3 -x264-params ref=4:qpmin=4:ipratio=1 -c:a libvo_aacenc -b:a 16k -movflags faststart output.mp4

If you want to batch from the commandline (the path for ffmpeg has to be specified if not in the directory, or ffmpeg isn't in they system path or setup as an environment variable):

for %a in ("*.asf") do ffmpeg -i "%a" -r 0.1 -c:v libx264 -crf 30 -g 3 -x264-params ref=4:qpmin=4:ipratio=1 -c:a libvo_aacenc -b:a 16k -movflags faststart "%~na.mp4"

Or you can do it as a batch file (write the following in notepad, save it, change the extension from .txt to .bat, double click the .bat file)

for %%a in ("*.asf") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -r 0.1 -c:v libx264 -crf 30 -g 6 -x264-params ref=4:qpmin=4:ipratio=1 -c:a libvo_aacenc -b:a 16k -movflags faststart "%%~na.mp4"
pause

[oldtrarunner]

I can't wait to try this! It may be a few days before I can get back to you but I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks.

[oldtrarunner]

I really like running batch files, it's always great to see the computer doing so much work for me. But I saw your reference to MPEGStreamclip and decided to check it out first. It turns out, this is what I was looking for a month ago! This little gem does a great job of trimming the .mov files generated by an IBM SmartCloud meeting. So I don't need to mess with .wmv's, asfbin, or ffmpeg.

Thanks again for all your help. Sorry it was such a long route to the destination.