How to convert .asf to mpeg?

[Viceroy]

Hello all,

I'm definitely a newbie at this sorta thing...so I would appreciate any help that can be offered. I have 3, 150+ meg files that I would like to get into .mpeg form so I can put them onto cd and watch on my dvd player. Does anyone kknow of a program that will do this?

Thanks in advance,
Steve

[tigerwolf]

check out the howto section on the left, tmpgenc will do this and its free, under the tools section.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc.htm

[Viceroy]

Thank you for your help, but I could not find anything on that page dealing with .asf files, am I missing something?

I tried to use this program last night. It encoded it as far as I could tell, but when I que'd it up in nero it gave me error messages how it wasn't properly formatted.

I burned it anyway, and the only thing that came out was the audio...on my dvd player that is.

Sorry for so many questions!

Steve

[tigerwolf]

well with tmpgenc I'd use the vcd template to assure compliancy.

the link is standard for asf and etc. If you scroll down to problems on the page you'll see where it refers to if you run into a problem with asf what to do.

[Viceroy]

Hello...

Thank you for your help so far. I swear, If I could pay ya for this advice I would :)

I have tried using tmpgenc, but when I hit preview to make sure everything is alright it has no video.

I have installed the latest codec...where would I find this vcd template?

Thanks ,
Steve

[tigerwolf]

actually tmpgenc comes with it. click load in tmpgenc and then choose the template subdirectory under the tmpgenc directory, you can also check over under the tools area for other templates and various codecs.

Such as if you are dealing with an smr movie you'll need the smr codec.

[buzzinhornets]

If you truly have a .asf file use ASFTools Advanced feature > convert to .avi http://www.geocities.com/myasftools/

If however, you notice as the asf file is being converted the WMV1 or WMV2 listed in one of the boxes then you really have a .wmv file and use this to convert to .avi


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

[Viceroy]

If you truly have a .asf file use ASFTools Advanced feature > convert to .avi http://www.geocities.com/myasftools/

If however, you notice as the asf file is being converted the WMV1 or WMV2 listed in one of the boxes then you really have a .wmv file and use this to convert to .avi

Hey man, thanks for your very knowledgable reply. It turns out that it is an .avi file after all. What is the easiest program to use to get it into a format that nero will deem ok to burn into a vcd?


Thanks,
Steve

[Viceroy]

...anyone?