Stream swapping

[P8tterns]

Hope this has an answer and I wasn't too lazy to find it. -)
I have a small personal player that wants to use nothing
other than ASF type files. Tried FormatFactory / Super etc
which do not help. Advanced myself to FFMPEG and these (below)
are the results from two files. The first is a playable file but the
second, although nearly identical, has one glaring difference.

Input #0, asf, from 'file0001.asf':
Duration: 00:02:29.48, start: 3.000000, bitrate: 2863 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: adpcm_ima_wav, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 384 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x480, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc

Input #0, asf, from 'testclip.asf':
Metadata:
WM/EncodingSettings: Lavf52.68.0
Duration: 00:00:19.49, start: 3.100000, bitrate: 3453 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x480, 29.92 tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: adpcm_ima_wav, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 384 kb/s

Yep. The streams are swapped. Testclip.asf is the one which fails. I'm not
going to go into depth about FFMPEG. I realize that there are -map options
but they do not and cannot work for such a simple swapping case because
FFMPEG _insists_ on forcing stream #0.0 to be the video stream. Is there
any way I can get the situation resolved. Pointers ? Directions ? Software ?

Thanks.

[Cornucopia]

For most MM contianers, video is the predominant stream and so is given the lower stream id. So I dont't know why the 2nd one wouldn't work; it is the more common layout.

You do know that ASF container is = WMV container, right? So I suggest you try WM Stream Editor. Since it's made by MS, it ought to be giving you compliant files. (You may need to rname the extension afterwards)

Scott

[Ai Haibara]

You do know that ASF container is = WMV container, right?

Well, WMV and WMA, anyway. Technically, ASF's the predecessor for WMV/WMA, but many programs (and even Microsoft) seem to treat them as the exact same thing. (Not that I know if anything was really changed, or if - aside from the codecs - they just use WMV/WMA like Apple uses .m4* to tell you what's in the file.)

(...but, I digress. :P)

[P8tterns]

For most MM contianers, video is the predominant stream and so is given the lower stream id.
So I don't know why the 2nd one wouldn't work; it is the more common layout.

Understood. It is the the most common and expected. Alas, the player expects it to be in the
particular the "old" (?) file ASF order of stream #0.0 for audio and #0.1 for video. I expect it's
a "legacy" format from MS. Virtually all the freeware formatters I've tried so far produce video
as stream #0 and #1 as audio.

Interestingly, if I convert the test clip MPG file to ASF format under VLC's "Convert/Save" function
(there are two options) the ASF file does indeed result in the "non-standard" arrangement of
audio primacy. Same thing when exporting via Adobe premiere's 8 Mobibox ASF file function.
It's under Mobile\Creative Zen\Mobibox. However, in both types of converter software, they fallback
to AAC (etc) and the common msmpegVx encoder types (etc) and not the particular types required as
indicated by the FFMPEG printout which I published before.

You do know that ASF container is = WMV container, right?
So I suggest you try WM Stream Editor.
Since it's made by MS, it ought to be giving you compliant files. (You may need to rname the extension afterwards)

I looked and looked but cannot find the specific editor you suggest. The terms in Google seem to
be very non-specific (a.k.a. loose). I think what you're referring to is now called "Expression Encoder 4" -
a freebie - by MS. Correct?

[Cornucopia]

No, No.

When you DL and install WME, it also adds 3 additional tools/utilities: WM Stream Editor, WM File Editor (with Indexer) and WM Profile Editor. I was talking about the stream editor.

AFAIK, the spec for ASF is identical to the spec for WMV/WMA, it's just that when an ASF has WMV-encoded video and/or WMA-encoded audio, then and only then should it be called WMV/WMA. That was MS's way of supposedly "guaranteeing" compatibility. And since ASF uses GUIDs, etc in their headers+subheaders, the order isn't really supposed to matter. Kind of like XML in that a reader/decoder should seek to the sections it recognizes and use them and just discard the rest.

Scott