Re-encoding unplayable (in Quicktime) ASF files

I recently got some ASF files that were not able to be played (only audio, no video) in Quicktime using the Flip4Mac WMV plugin. The files though played fine in VLC, but I prefer to watch them using Frontrow.

The ASF files can be re-encoded using VLC:

1. Use the "Streaming/Exporting Wizard..." from the "File" in VLC
   
2. Select "Transcode/Save to file" and click "Next"
   
3. Select the file you want to re-encode using "Choose..." or an existing playlist item
   
4. Enable "Transcode video" with "WMV 2" as "Codec" and e.g. "1024" as "Bitrate (kb/s)", also
   
5. enable "Transcode audio" with "MP3" as "Codec" and e.g. "128" as "Bitrate (kb/s)", then click "Next"
   
6. Select "ASF" as "Encapsulation format" and click "Next"
   
7. Click "Choose", enter you preferred destination file name and directory, then click "Next"
   
8. In the "Summary" click "Finish" and wait until the progress bar in the controller window moved to the right side
   
9. Enjoy the re-encoded ASF in Quicktime
   

Elgato Turbo.264

I just posted a comment aver at Macsimum News about the Elgato Turbo.264:

I bought myself a Turbo.264 recently. It is about 25-30% faster than my iMac 24” C2D 2.33 GHz using Quicktime (roughly a 400 MB XVID of 45 minutes playtime takes about 15 minutes instead of 20 minutes to encode). On the other hand the CPU usage is only about 10-15 % when I use the Turbo.264.

Encoding with subtitles is though a completely different story. The moment a srt subtitle file is present, the encoding slows down significantly, the CPU usage goes up to 50% or even more. It seems that with subtitles the Turbo.264 does not really improve the encoding time anymore and also the CPU usage is not that much different when using Quicktime with or without the Turbo.264 plugged in.

I mainly bought the Turbo.264 to re-encode videos with subtitles to be watched on the iPhone. I was a bit disappointed about the performance with subtitles at first, but then just switched to watch the movies without subtitles (it’s a good training to improve my English). I’m very happy with the easy handling of the Turbo.264, just drag the movies you want to re-encode to the Turbo application, select in which format you want them to be (iPhone, iPod, AppleTV) and hit start. One notice though, the files seem to be about 20-30% bigger than compared to ffmpegX, but also the bit-rate of the produced videos is higher with the Turbo.264, which results in an excellent quality for a 1-pass encoding.

Overall, despite the fact that the Turbo.264 does not really improve anything when you want to have subtitles, I am really happy that I bought it. I can now re-encode videos in the background while working without any noticeable performance-decrease using other applications aside.

Videos with subtitles on the iPhone - Part 1 - Quicktime Pro

Since I got lucky yesterday getting an iPhone, one of the first things I tried to do is to convert some series that I want to watch to the iPhone. I always watch them with subtitles (srt files) and that does not cause any problem with Quitcktime and some additional Plugins (Perian, Flip4Mac) when I watch them on the Mac. 

To get them played back on the iPhone is though not that easy. I tired a few solutions and here comes what I found out about using Quicktime Pro to do so.

1. make sure that you have Quicktime Pro and Perian installed
   
2. rename the subtitle file (only works with srt format subtitles) to have the same name as the video (except for the ending of course)
   
3. Open the movie in Quicktime and select "Export" from the "File" menu, then select "Movie to iPhone" in the the "Export" dropdown that appears in the dialog
   
4. hit save and wait (can take some time)
   
5. copy your newly created file to the iPhone and enjoy
   

If you have the subtitles not in the srt format at hand you can use Jubler to convert it from all formats (sub files are pretty common) to the required srt files.

In the next post of this series I will show how you can convert the video using FFMPEGX.