[Scrod]

If one does not exist, what's the best way to go about doing this? I'd like to be able to de-Microsoftify any media files I find.

[Millennium]

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to do this. Microsoft and Real have both taken pains to make it impossible to get video out of their formats, once it's in them. It was once possible with Real, thanks to the author of VirtualDub, but he was forced to remove the functionality (which he had reverse-engineered) after Real sued him.

Theoretically, you could try to use Snapz Pro to re-record the video as a QuickTime. I'm not certain how successful that would be, though.

Now, for the interesting part: could such software be written? Theoretically, it may be possible, without reverse-engineering Microsoft (I don't know about Real). The reason: Mac versions of WiMP play their video through QuickTime. You can't play ASF/WMV/whatever through the standard QuickTime player because the codecs are embedded into the WiMP application, but it does use QuickTime, effectively temporarily enabling QuickTime to use the formats (FUN FACT: As long as the WiMP application is open, you can actually play these movies in the QuickTime player).

Now, Microsoft does not include an encoder with Mac versions of WiMP, so you aren't likely to be able to just do a simple export job (though even this may be possible, if you have QTPro and export to QuickTime). But if a way could be found to intercept the decoded frames, you could then re-encode them. I know you can do this with DivX files; I have done it, by running the DivX player, Doctoring the movie and then using Cleaner to export by opening the Doctored file (the process takes an obscenely long time, but it works). I haven't tried it with a standard ASF or WMV though. It might work if you run WiMP and then use another QuickTime-using program to export, but I can't be certain of that, because of the file-format issues (DivX uses AVI, which QuickTime supports, but ASF and WMV use proprietary formats).

A note: This requires OS9 (OS8 ought to work too, I guess). I doubt that the trick will work in OSX, though I guess we can't be certain until WiMP comes out for it.

[Millennium]

One other note: you will lose video quality in the conversion. This is just the nature of recoding when you use lossy compression. If you really want the best possible quality you're better off recapturing. That is, unfortunately, out of reach for most people, so recoding may be your only option. But if you can recapture, you'd be better off doing it.

[Scrod]

Millennium, thanks for the thorough, informational response! I did NOT know that WMP used the QuickTime subsystem to present its video on the screen! This definitely opens things up quite a bit.

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: Scrod ]

[Tee]

>FUN FACT: As long as the WiMP application is open, you can actually play these movies >in the QuickTime player

I have not been able to accomplish this...

With WMP7 open Quicktime Player (QT5) will not recognize any WMP documents. The open dialog won't display these file types and the QT player won't accept an asf or wmv that is dragged to it...

Maybe you were talking about playing a DivX encoded avi in QTPlayer after using the DivX Doctor command in DivXPlayer 1.0b10 ?

As for using SnapzPro to attmept to capture the screen while the movie is playing in WMP, my experience has not been good on my G3/266.

[lucylawless]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>FUN FACT: As long as the WiMP application is open, you can actually play these movies in the QuickTime player).
</STRONG>

yes, please elaborate on how you do this, because I can't get it to work

[Millennium]

For now, I've only been able to do it with DivX-encoded AVI files. The way you do it is use the DivX player's DivX Doctor function to split the sound off into a QuickTime-encoded file, and then open that file in the QuickTime player.

For this to work in ASF and WMV files, you'd need to make some kind of a "doctor" thing for them too. I'm not sure if that's actually possible, but I'm looking into it.