Converting WMV to AVI

nialldinho

Sorry if this has been covered before. I tried searching but it has been disabled.

I have a WMV file that I want to convert to AVI to play on a PMP. I had a quick try with VirtualDub last night but when I played the AVI the sound was badly out of synch.

Does anyone know a free and easy way to convert from WMV to AVI? Or what, if anything, I may have done wrong with VirtualDub?

Thanks

jor el

Good luck. Converting from WMV to anything is notoriously difficult for one simple reason. MS (who own the WMV codec) don't want you to do it. Older versions of Virtualdub used to be able to open WMVs but the newer ones don't, they had to remove support for WMV at the request of MS.

Here's a loooong way of doing it using a variety of tools. This tutorial is quite old so the tools may no longer be available (it mentions VirtualDub 1.4).

nialldinho

Thanks for that.

I asked the experts at Experts Exchange and got the following method:

download free version of TMPGEnc from:
http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html


unzip to a directory by itself

run the program (TMPGEnc.exe)

cancel out of the first screen that pops up so you get to the main program window

near bottom in middle, click 'browse' next to video source.

select your WMV file

go to file menu, select output to file -> avi

type a file name.

pick your settings (optional, for me it defaulted to uncompressed video, pcm 44k stereo audio)

click save.



if you're having trouble with quality of video conversions, try shutting down unnecessary applications and processes. and don't use the computer for anything else while the conversion is taking place

I used xVid compression at the default settings though so the file wouldn't get too big.

norbert64

winavi videoconverter does the trick, it can convert anything. Does a reasonably good job of it, aint perfect though.

http://www.winavi.com/en/video-converter/video-converter.htm

the trial puts a big watermark on your files though, but there are *cough* ways to get around that.

nialldinho

The method I gave above worked fine. And I didn't notice any watermarks on it cos it's freeware.