ASF file not seeking

[Toro567]

I recently purchased a nanny cam type camera, that both streams video via wifi to my computer, and will record on a microSD card in the camera. When I went to download the SD card and play the videos (it records in blocks of time 1 hour long), they would not play in Windows media player (missing codec). Next I tried VLC, and the videos play, but will not FF or seek - you just have to watch from beginning to end. If you try to skip ahead, it just throws you back to the beginning. Is there an easy way to make the ASF file seekable?? I have looked into this on the web but every option has either not worked or is too technical for me. Looking to ideally input the file, hit a couple of buttons, and output a seekable file.

Thanks!

[sneaker]

Try remuxing using ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i input.asf -map 0 -c copy output.asf

[poisondeathray]

you can also try asfbin

[Toro567]

I tried asfbin, but I don't know what settings to use. My output was just black video with a really loud hum. Can you provide any step by step instructions?

[poisondeathray]

If it's "fixable" just importing and exporting will usually fix it

You can also try forcing an index in the advanced options

Also open the file with mediainfoxp => view => text and copy and past back the info. Not all asf files are WMV type, sometimes you can get other bizzare variants

[Toro567]

This is what I got:

General
Complete name : E:\IPCamera-150903-023453-P.asf
Format : Windows Media
File size : 729 MiB
Duration : 22mn 6s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 4 610 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 3 076 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2015-09-02 18:34:53.000

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec ID : h264
Description of the codec : h264
Bit rate : 4 387 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Variable
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits

Audio
ID : 2
Format : ADPCM
Codec ID : 11
Codec ID/Hint : Intel
Description of the codec : IMA_ADPCM
Duration : 22mn 6s
Bit rate : 32.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 8 000 Hz
Bit depth : 4 bits
Stream size : 5.06 MiB (1%)

[poisondeathray]

It uses h264/avc, not wmv type video

I would try re-wrapping it into a different container

e.g. load into virtualdub, video=> direct stream copy, audio=> direct stream copy, file=>save as AVI . You might need an h264/avc VFW decoder installed like FFDSHOW

Or try rewrapping with ffmpeg into a MP4 or MKV container

eg.
ffmpeg -i input.asf -c:v copy -c:a copy output.mkv

[Toro567]

Thanks, I'll give it a try soon. I'm hoping these programs are used-friendly (?), I'm not very tech-savy.

[Toro567]

OK, so Virtualdub doesn't seem to accept ASF files and ffmpeg I have no clue about. Getting desperate, and advice? How do I get an ASF file to be seekable? There's got to be a way to do this that doesn't require a Ph.D

[poisondeathray]

You don't have a typical "ASF", which usually uses WMV compression . So no, there is no easy way - that's probably why asfbin didn't work

Vdub is probably the next easiest way that has some chance of working, but you need to download the WMV /ASF plugin to be able to load ASF into vdub

When you click on the vdub hotlink, scroll down and there will be links to various import plugins
https://www.videohelp.com/software/Virtualdub

here is the one for ASF/WMV
http://gral.y0.pl/~fcchandler/Plugins/WMV/

[Toro567]

Thanks but I got it! Ran it through a program called WM Converter Lite.

[poisondeathray]

I suspect it's re-encoding the file. When you re-encode the file, you can place keyframes anywhere and it will seek properly, but you will lose some quality using lossy compression . Those other suggestions were attempting to "re-wrap" the file, to put it into another container. This might not work, but there is no quality loss and the process should be faster

[johns0]

Try mkvmerge to see if it will accept this file and output as mkv since it uses h264.

[Toro567]

Yes definitely noticed a quality reduction, and file sizes are 30-40% smaller. Another side effect is that some videos play normally but others play at fast speed...all collected with the same camera. Cant figure that out. Ill try the other methods,

[sneaker]

mkvmerge does not support wmv/asf input.

I suggest you learn how to use ffmpeg from the command-line. It is not that hard, really. You can download it here:
http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
If you are unsure which version you need download the 32 bit "Static" one. Extract it and copy "ffmpeg.exe" from the "bin" folder to the folder of your asf file. In Windows' explorer hold the left shift key on your keyboard, right-click into the folder and then click "Open Command Window here". Then simply copy and paste the command line examples we have given you and hit enter. ffmpeg should do its work then. (Just replace "input.asf" with the name of your file).

Example in addition to the ones already suggested:
ffmpeg -i "input.asf" -c:v copy -c:a flac "output.mkv"
(this will convert audio losslessly to a more compatible format since I don't know if ADPCM in mkv is supported by ffmpeg or vlc)

[johns0]

The video is h264,not wmv so it should be able to open it.

[sneaker]

The container is Windows Media so mkvmerge will never get to the h.264 track.

[Toro567]

Ok, ffmpeg worked like a charm, thanks for the guidance! Now, I have a bunch of files that need to be converted...is there a way to do a batch conversion of a bunch of files at once, or does each file need to be done separately?

[roma_turok]

you can use program AnotherGUI
set ffmpeg.exe location in preferences,
drag and drop files, select preset ffmpeg: Copy codecs into mp4 container and click Go

[sneaker]

Ok, ffmpeg worked like a charm, thanks for the guidance! Now, I have a bunch of files that need to be converted...is there a way to do a batch conversion of a bunch of files at once, or does each file need to be done separately?

Do everything like I explained in my last post but use the following command:
for %a in (*.asf) do ffmpeg -i "%a" -c:v copy -c:a flac "%~na.mkv"

[Toro567]

Hmm, sorry need a little more detail... so how do I input each file name for the batch? multiple command lines like ffmpeg -i "input.asf" -c:v copy -c:a flac "output.mkv" followed by the line you just gave me? how are the command lines separated?

[poisondeathray]

It's a batch command. It will process all the .asf files in a directory (that is what the *.asf is for)

[Toro567]

Wow this is frustrating... Ok so it seems that ffmpeg does work great on the first video of the series (as I explained this camera records in user defined blocks of time of up to a max of 60 minutes, so there are multiple files in a day if recording all day), and in one case the second. However for most other video files for a day, the ffmpeg output keeps repeating "starting new cluster due to time stamp" followed by a few lines of "invalid dropping". The video seems to be stuck at the last frame and doesn't play.

[poisondeathray]

Can you upload the smallest video sample you have that doesn't work ?

[Toro567]

I took some 1 minute videos, some converted with ffmpeg, some didn't. Heres one than didn't.

[poisondeathray]

It seeks in potplayer

I'll take a closer look to see if you can "fix" it for other players

[Toro567]

I appreciate the help. Potplayer does play the videos and seek, but it seems to be having a really hard time with the longer videos. When seeking to a further point in a video it takes a LONG time for it to catch up an play from that point, and sometimes does it in really slow or fast motion. Still not an efficient way to skip thru a vid quickly to get an overview.

[poisondeathray]

On the small sample, if you demux and remux it works in all players. But the timing might be an issue. Part of the issue is the timing in the original file, the timecodes are messed up. It's probably like that for all the files that have problems. It might have to do with your device buffering before it records. If you demux and remux the audio/video streams, you get rid of the pre-existing timecodes and assume a new frame rate when you remux them into a new container - but the timing might be slightly off - so if timing for events or audio sync is critical, it's not going to be a good option

And you can re-encode all of them as a last resort (you tried that already) . It's slower, and you lose quality if you use a lossy method

[Toro567]

I noticed that the sound and video were out of sync in potplayer. Not a big issue. So how do I "demux and remux the audio/video streams, you get rid of the pre-existing timecodes and assume a new frame rate when you remux them into a new container "?

[poisondeathray]

You can demux / remux it with ffmpeg, or if you want you can use something else to remux like mkvmerge

Try it out on one of the longer problematic files. The timing will be off - the timecodes in the original are very variable, while this assumes a constant frame rate. But if you use the old timecodes, the timing is off too. It might be a problem with reading the timecodes - I used a program called wmvtimes to extract them

ffmpeg -i IPCamera-150909-185559-P.asf -c:v copy -an vid1.h264 -vn -c:a copy aud1.wav

ffmpeg -r 25 -f h264 -i vid1.h264 -i aud1.wav -c:v copy -c:a copy r25.mkv