ASF to MOV or MPEG4 problems using FFMPEGX for Mac

[Maverick101]

HI
I have an old VGA quality cam I use in car to capture track days. It only records in ASF format so to use the files on my Mac with iMovie I use FFMPEGX free version to convert files. I am trying to convert one such file 440Mb in size and it keeps failing for unknown reasons. I also tried converting it to MPEG4 format using same s/w and it doesn't work. It goes through to completion but the file isn't readable by quicktime or other video viewers or importable by iMovie.

I'm not a sophisticated user but if anyone has ideas on anything I can do to convert this file or can suggest other free transcoders to do it I'd appreciate it.

thx
Mike

[Case]

ffmpegX can produce a log ("Process Information"), which should provide feedback on what is was trying to do (and possibly why it failed). You may access this log by clicking the blue "i" in the ffmpegX Progress window after a conversion. If you copy that here, we can have a look, and hopefully provide some setting changes to make it work.

[Maverick101]

Thanks ! Here is the log of the latest attempt: (I'm afraid it doesn't mean much to me)


FFmpeg version CVS, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
Mac OSX universal build for ffmpegX
libavutil version: 49.0.0
libavcodec version: 51.9.0
libavformat version: 50.4.0
Thu Sep 29 14:31:45 BST 2011
Seems that stream 0 comes from film source: 1000.00 (1000/1) -> 29.97 (30000/1001)
Input #0, asf, from '/Users/mlehrter/Movies/iMovie Original Movies.localized/Silverstone Aug 11/PICT5113.ASF':
Duration: 00:22:50.9, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2388 kb/s
Stream #0.0, 29.97 fps(r): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x480
Stream #0.1: Audio: adpcm_ms, 44100 Hz, mono, 177 kb/s
Output #0, mov, to '/Users/mlehrter/Movies/iMovie Original Movies.localized/Silverstone Aug 11/PICT5113.ASF.ff.mp4.mov':
Stream #0.0, 29.97 fps(c): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x352, q=2-9, pass 1, 1516 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, 96 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf bad header 90 at:409377995
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf skip 4063 0
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf bad header c0 at:409382120
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf bad header 1 at:409386245
asf.c:591: failed assertion `asf->packet_replic_size==0'
/bin/sh: line 1: 39715 Abort trap /Applications/ffmpegX_0.0.9y/ffmpegX.app//Contents/Resources/ffmpeg -i /Users/mlehrter/Movies/iMovie\ Original\ Movies.localized/Silverstone\ Aug\ 11/PICT5113.ASF -y -threads 2 -map 0.0:0.0 -f mov -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1516 -aspect 16:9 -s 640x352 -r ntsc -g 12 -me epzs -qmin 2 -qmax 9 -acodec aac -ab 96 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -map 0.1:0.1 -benchmark -pass 1 -passlogfile /Users/mlehrter/Movies/iMovie\ Original\ Movies.localized/Silverstone\ Aug\ 11/PICT5113.ASF.ff.mp4.mov /Users/mlehrter/Movies/iMovie\ Original\ Movies.localized/Silverstone\ Aug\ 11/PICT5113.ASF.ff.mp4.mov

[Case]

Input #0, asf, from 'PICT5113.ASF':
Duration: 00:22:50.9, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2388 kb/s
Stream #0.0, 29.97 fps(r): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x480
Stream #0.1: Audio: adpcm_ms, 44100 Hz, mono, 177 kb/s

This part tells that your source file has MPEG-4 video with ADPCM_MS audio in an ASF container. I have no movie file with such audio, but the codec is listed in the ffmpeg documentation for encoding and decoding, so that shouldn't be the problem.

Output #0, mov, to 'PICT5113.ASF.ff.mp4.mov':
Stream #0.0, 29.97 fps(c): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 640x352, q=2-9, pass 1, 1516 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, 96 kb/s

This part tells that the intended output is MPEG-4 video with AAC audio in a MOV container. iMovie should be happy with that. MP4 would do, as well.

[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf bad header 90 at:409377995
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf skip 4063 0
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf bad header c0 at:409382120
[asf @ 0x5597b8]ff asf bad header 1 at:409386245
asf.c:591: failed assertion `asf->packet_replic_size==0'
/bin/sh: line 1: 39715 Abort trap

This part is the actual error. It seems this conversion has trouble with the ASF container itself, rather than the video codec or the audio codec. That doesn't mean the file is bad per se.

My suggestion: Set up ffmpegX as you normally would. Before hitting 'Encode', switch to the Options tab. See if 'Decode with QT' is selected. If so, de-select it. Then Encode.

If the MOV mpeg-4 preset fails, do give the MP4 mpeg-4 preset a try. The internals are a bit different for those, so it might make a difference.

If that doesn't solve it, perhaps you could record and upload a short 10 second clip for me to run some tests to come up with a working solution (either with or without ffmpegX) ? It is easier to pinpoint the issue with a real life example, rather than keep guessing.