WMV to MPEG

[Geenie]

How do I encode WMV to MPEG? I tried TMPGEnc but it took forever, kept freezing up, didn't complete and there was no sound after the first couple of minutes. Please help

[rldncd87]

I need help also

[Stinky]

I can show you how to go from WMV to DivX or uncompressed AVI

if you do high bitrate DivX that should preserve the quality then you can convert it in TMPGEnc

if you have A LOT of HD space you could go directly to ucompressed AVI

[Fred©]

Have you tried the oldest version of TMPGEnc (12a, aka beta 0.11.20.98 japanese version with english patch)?

It seems the one can open Micro$oft ASF and WMV...

take a look at:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/tmpgenc_12a.cfm

[Stinky]

any version of TMPGEnc still opens asf and wmv

you need to change the priority of MS Direct Show in TMPGEnc (under the VFAPI Plugins)

but still there are times when it just won't open a file

12a of TMPGEnc is like a 'VCD Urban Legend' -- I haven't seen one good argument to support the use of this old version over the newer vesions ... I know that a few versions of 12 had a slightly diffent MPEG-2 quality but all the most recent versions are 'fixed'

[Fred©]

Stinky,

first of all, congrats for your MMC registry tool. Y use it and like a lot!!

I read this forum that only that version could open ASF file, because of copyright licensing issues and the newer ones have removed this function... because of that, I have both version of TMPGenc... the oldest and the newest TMPGEnc 2.53 Plus version.

Fred©

[Stinky]

<<first of all, congrats for your MMC registry tool. Y use it and like a lot!! >>

thanks I'm glad you find it useful :-)

<< I read this forum that only that version could open ASF file, because of copyright licensing issues and the newer ones have removed this function... because of that, I have both version of TMPGenc... the oldest and the newest TMPGEnc 2.53 Plus version. >>

no - TMPGEnc can usually open anything you have the correct codec for - asf, mpeg-1, mpeg-2 and so on

VirtualDub 1.3c supported ASF but MS forced him to remove ASF support from all future versions - so if you need to frameserve an ASF file into TMPGEnc you need to use VirtualDub 1.3c ... but the ASF support doesn't lend itself to WMV support even though it's a type of ASF (or similar type of format) because VirtualDub can't handle the newer format (becuase it doesn't recognize it)

[Geenie]

Stinky: How do I go to AVI? I tried opening it in VirtualDub (the ASF version and a newer version) and it wouldn't open. Is there another way? Thanks for your help

[Stinky]

Here is the step by step I use to go from ASF or WMV to DivX or uncompressed AVI

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ma9sjb/dvd/asf2avi.htm

once you figure out Graph Edit it's not too hard to convert ASF/WMV to anything you want

careful if you choose to go to uncompressed AVI -- 12 minutes = 1gig

so dont do this unless you have a lot of hard drive space

graph edit can be found here
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/graphedit.html

[buzzinhornets]

How to convert ASF/WMV files to AVI.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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

[MOVIEGEEK]

TMPGEnc ver.2.53 works for me.
Great regtool "Stinky" ATI should hire you.

[Geenie]

I tried GraphEdit and I got an avi file with audio and video out of it but they weren't in sync. How do I sync them up?

[Stinky]

depends on what you plan to do next - you can fix the sync in TMPGEnc or in VirtualDub if you plan to use VirtualDub to frameserve

what did you do ASF to ? -- did you go to DivX ? or uncompressed AVI ?

[Mirror_Image]

any version of TMPGEnc still opens asf and wmv

you need to change the priority of MS Direct Show in TMPGEnc (under the VFAPI Plugins)

Yep, just change it from a -1 to a 0, and WMV files load great (in TMPGenc 2.53 anyway, didn't try any other versions).

[Geenie]

I have changed that setting in TMPGEnc and am trying that now. I
compressed the file I made in GraphEdit and used Divx MPEG-4 Video Codec. I can use either VirtualDub or TMPGEnc - whatever's easiet. Will I have to cut part of the video up so it syncs to the audio? It is REALLY out of sync. BTW, I appreciate all the help

[buzzinhornets]

if you had used my method, it would have been perfectly synched... oh well, you lose.

[Stinky]

Ok so you have two options - you can load into VirtualDub and go under Audio-Interleaving and add your audio delay there and then framserve the file into TMPGEnc

or you can load it into TMPGEnc - Settings-Advanced-'select source range' then double click on it - and enter your audio gap correct.

how much audio delay/gap your going to need is trial and error

my suggestion is if you are cutting up a full move to be 2 mpeg's - use TMPGEnc - find the end of the movie going into Settings-Advanced-'select source range' then double click on it -- move the scroll bar to the end of the movie (or when the credits start is even better) the hit "set end frame" then take that number (for example 152680 and divide that by 2 put that result in as the start frame) - now your movie is set up to encode the second half of the movie --- set the video motion search to fastest -- and start doing trial and error to figure out the audio delay/gap --- encode 10 seonds of the movie - hit stop - check the mpeg and see if the audio is getting better or worse (you can use positive and negative numbers to fix the gap/delay) - once you find the exact number for the gap - put it in - set your motion seach to a higher quality - enter this part in File-Add Current Project To Batch - give it a file name like Movie_part2.mpg (remember we just figured out the second half of the movie)

then go back into source range - take the start frame (which is the middle of the movie) put that value into the end frame and set the start frame to 0 -- then again do File-Add Current Projec To Batch and give it a new file name --- for example Movie_part1.mpg and the previous one Movie_part2.mpg

thats it - now hit Start on the batch window - and you just cut your movie in half as you encode it in TMPGEnc and fixed the audio delay in one shot

I hope that wasn't too much info at one - but I'm sure if you read that over you will figure it out

[Stinky]

Quick question when you did DivX 4 as your recompression did you feed both your audio and video into the same codec? just curious - if you had DivX 4 for video and audio you shouldn't have had any out of sync

[Mirror_Image]

if you had used my method, it would have been perfectly synched... oh well, you lose.

Incorrect, because the conversion did not alter the source file; easy to just try again. Are you using an odd version of TMPGenc that corrupts the source file? What version is that?

[Geenie]

I am using TMPGEnc beta version 12H. I will try the 2.53 version tomorrow as it is getting late.
I didn't put both audio and video into the codec in GraphEdit. It won't let me put it in the same one or a copy of the same one. I will try editing the file so it syncs up but it is really off - at least one scene off. I will try the way you suggested too, Buzzinhornets.
Another question: I tried ASFtools to convert to avi and it did but it won't show the video even if I install the codec Windows Media Player asks for. Why is that?
Thanks for all the help - I will keep working on this

[Geenie]

After all that, I tried the 2.53 version of TMPGEnc and it worked fine. Thanks for all the help everyone - I really appreciate it