Save WMV's with VLC 8.0?

[vaj]

This was on macosxhints last week. Anyone here try it yet?:

It's now possible to save to disk any video stream VLC 8.0 can handle. For the first time with a Mac (as far as I know), it's like having a Save option in my Windows Media Player! You can save your videos in two ways: using the command line with VLC, or by using the VLC Aqua interface.

In the first case, you simply enter Terminal and type the appropriate CL command. So, assuming VLC is in the Apps folder, and you want to record a MMS video stream to an AVI file, you can type the following:
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC mms://anything_ending_in.wmv \
--sout file/avi:movie.avi

That should be one long line; it's shown on two with a Unix continuation backslash for a narrower display.

The WMP stream uses the MMS protocol and usually ends in .wmv. But remenber: in most cases, you must go for the link inside the site's source code. An example is a news video stream which uses the WMP plug-in: you should view the page source, copy the MMS link, and paste it in Terminal. Anyway, with the above command, you should get a file called movie.avi in your home folder.

The second way is new to VLC version 8.0 (I think), and is very user-friendly (no Terminal required). Use the Open Network menu option from the File menu. What is new (and really works) is that you can now handle any type of video stream (including Real). I discovered the best solution is to save the stream as 'raw' uncompressed data. So in VLC, choose Open Network, and paste your MMS (RSTP with Real) link in the appropriate field. Next, check Advanced Output and click Settings. From there, choose File (use Browse to create a new file) and check the "Dump raw input" button. You must also choose Raw in the Incapsulation Method option (not sure here). Click OK, and you're back to the Open Network dialog window. When you click OK again, VLC will start downloading the stream and recording it to you file.

Acording to the stream format, you must, once downloaded, add the right extension to the raw file in order to open it in the right player. So, if you recorded a WMP stream, give the file a .wmv extension, and view it with Windows Media Player.

With these instructions, you should be able to record any video stream. I already did it for several TV news (I wanted to record some political statements from two candidates), and the resulting .wmv files open beautifully with Windows Media Player.

Beautifully? wait a minute! WMP is WMP, right? So, believe it or not, these .wmv files I recorded on my Mac are not compatible with Windows Media Player for PC. Well, it looks like in my PC, with the same exact file, I only get the sound track; the video track is gone! But again, not in my Mac. Up to now, this is the only complaint I have. VLC is an incredible piece of free software, and we must thank the French guys who have been coding it.


http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004110413302786

[mhar4]

I have a bunch of asf files which I had saved to the hard drive using the aptly-named ASFRecorderX. I tried this thing with VLC and, well, it didn't really work but it did do something. I tried to transcode an asf to mpeg-4, and at first Quicktime wouldn't open the file, which I called a .mov Renamed it to .m4v and it opened it. However, firstly, the colours are a bit odd; secondly, there is some sort of key frame issue quite frequently, so you get that weird pixellated smearing between edits; and finally, and most bizarrely, the video runs fast and the audio is really slow. I can't even think of how the video and audio are corresponding, so great is the difference between them. The audio sounds like a 45rpm single (a vinyl disk with a physical groove to encode the audio) played back at 16rpm, the video is, maybe 25% faster than it should be, at a guess. The effect is pretty funky.

So an interesting experiment, but does really solve my immediate problem, which is how to make edits in these asfs.

[live4ever]

I tried it with some Real and QuickTime (couldn't find the right URL for wmv) streams from a surgery site.

Seems to work fine.

[thoughton]

[Removed this bit since I seem to have posted the same message in another thread here: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=243335 - too much posting fries your brain :P]

I'm also finding this new version of VLC is an absolute CPU hog. I am constantly getting 'your computer is too slow' messages, to the point there the app is hardly worth using now. I've seen comments to similar effect at the usual places, Xlr8YourMac, MacInTouch etc. One guy was getting the same message on his dual 2.5 G5