how to convert mms files to ANYTHING *please help*

[DJMichaelAngelo]

I'd like to turn a short 2-minute clip http://www.kpho.com/video/9950052/index.html into any sort of file I can save to my hard drive. Doesn't matter if it's avi, wmv, mpeg, QuickTime, RealPlayer, etc, etc - ANYTHING! I've probably spent close to 3-4 hours on this the last couple weeks with no luck. Have found some good freeware like Super-C and demo programs, but I'm still stuck. I consider myself a moderately advanced computer user, but this has frustrated me to no end - I would be INCREDIBLY grateful if someone could tell me if this is even possible, before I waste any more time on doing the impossible. Best I could do is, from this URL above, I believe that the video file itself is hidden in one of these 3 locations:

1 - mms://wms.ibsys.com:80//2006/1205/10466806.200k.wmv
2 - http://mfile.akamai.com/25580/wmv/vod.i … 6.200k.asx
3 - mms://a1349.v255807.c25580.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1349/25580/v0001/vod.ibsys.com/2006/1205/10466806.200k.wmv

If anyone can help, all I want to do is somehow capture this streaming video as some kind of file that I can save and preserve on my computer forever - doesn't need to be perfect quality, preferably under 50MB or so. Anyone who can do this is officially my hero.

Mike
djmichaelangelo3@yahoo.com

[squid_80]

Get VLC. Install it and run it.
Go to File->Open network stream. Select the HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS option and enter the third location you posted into the URL box. Then check the Stream/Save box (below in Advanced options) and hit the settings button.
Check the box next to File and the box next to Dump raw input. Use the browse button to choose a file to save to (manually add a .wmv extension when entering the filename).
Hit OK to clear all the dialogs and VLC should start doing its thing with the slider moving from left to right. When it gets to the end the slider should disappear and you should have a 2.42MB wmv file.

[DJMichaelAngelo]

Get VLC. Install it and run it.
Go to File->Open network stream. Select the HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS option and enter the third location you posted into the URL box. Then check the Stream/Save box (below in Advanced options) and hit the settings button.
Check the box next to File and the box next to Dump raw input. Use the browse button to choose a file to save to (manually add a .wmv extension when entering the filename).
Hit OK to clear all the dialogs and VLC should start doing its thing with the slider moving from left to right. When it gets to the end the slider should disappear and you should have a 2.42MB wmv file.

sweet! Dude, you're amazing....only one small catch. The file converted fine, and ends up playing in the VLC program alright (more or less - glitches a bit at beginning and end) but when I try to play the resulting 2.42MB wmv file in Windows Media Player (version 9.00.00.3349) there's no audio! :( I know my WMP isn't messed up, because it plays other .wmv files just fine. Any ideas? Thanks for getting me this far though - I'm grinning like an idiot now from ear to ear I'm so happy! Victory is in sight! *lol*

[stegre]

I think your file is fine & it's a playback problem due to a weird WMV vs WMA version "mismatch" in the same file (in fact, I think the audio is actually raw PCM & not really normal "WMA" at all) - in any event, try either of these:

Alternative 1. Get this zip file (http://www.ftyps.com/unrelated/WMADMOD.zip) file, unzip the contents (WMADMOD.DLL) to any dir, get a command prompt, CD to that dir and run type "regsvr32 WMADMOD.DLL" & you should get a "suceeded" dialog. Re-open WMP or any other DirectSHow Player and see if it fixed the sound. If it affects anything else adversly, which I think is unlikely, it's easy enough to put everything back by "un-regging" it the new one & "re-regging" the orig - you prob have an existing copy of a file with that name in \windows\system32, but I'm guessing this one is a different and poss newer) version version than what you have.

Alternative 2: If you have ffdshow installed (and you can manage to find their "audio decoder configuration" dialog!) change the decoder setting pulldown next to WMA 8/9 from the "disabled" to "libavcodec".
---
You could probably also losslessly fix the file itself, and maybe re-download a less "jerky" version too, but meanwhile see if the sound thing works.

[DJMichaelAngelo]

I think your file is fine & it's a playback problem due to a weird WMV vs WMA version "mismatch" in the same file (in fact, I think the audio is actually raw PCM & not really normal "WMA" at all) - in any event, try either of these:

Alternative 1. Get this zip file (http://www.ftyps.com/unrelated/WMADMOD.zip) file, unzip the contents (WMADMOD.DLL) to any dir, get a command prompt, CD to that dir and run type "regsvr32 WMADMOD.DLL" & you should get a "suceeded" dialog. Re-open WMP or any other DirectSHow Player and see if it fixed the sound. If it affects anything else adversly, which I think is unlikely, it's easy enough to put everything back by "un-regging" it the new one & "re-regging" the orig - you prob have an existing copy of a file with that name in \windows\system32, but I'm guessing this one is a different and poss newer) version version than what you have.

Alternative 2: If you have ffdshow installed (and you can manage to find their "audio decoder configuration" dialog!) change the decoder setting pulldown next to WMA 8/9 from the "disabled" to "libavcodec".
---
You could probably also losslessly fix the file itself, and maybe re-download a less "jerky" version too, but meanwhile see if the sound thing works.

wow - I am among geniuses! Oddly enough, I've discovered the file itself is fine, it's my computer and/or WMP that's the culprit! Something must've happened to my WMP in the last few days because on certain wmv files, it's not playing the audio. I go to the source page for the news clip (http://www.kpho.com/video/10466806/index.html) and the video plays, but no audio! I viewed the same URL on my work computer, and the audio played just fine. Ergo, the file is fine and it's a problem on my end. Maybe I'll try re-installing my WMP (I only have a Windows 2000 machine, so I'm stuck with version 9) or if I'm feeling extra ambitious, perhaps I'll try your step 1 above. Thanks for the help Stegre and Squid80 - I'm blown away by your knowledge!

[CruNcher]

@ dasiy0627

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=931244#post931244

[DJMichaelAngelo]

Time for part deux! I don't know if this would be considered an mms file, but it sure is awfully hard to isolate! Here's the URL of the clip:

http://www.azcentral.com/phpAPP/multimedia/flash.php?path=rtmp://azcentral.com/news/0215covancemeet6pm

Like before, I'm trying to somehow "capture" this cilp as a saveable .wmv file or Realtime file that I can save on my computer for my archives. Somehow the actual video itself is hidden on rtmp://cp22499.edgefcs.net/ondemand, I'm told, and it doesn't leave any trace in my Temp Internet Files either. If anyone's smart enough to figure this out for me, I know it's the people on this message board! :) First person to do it I'll even send you $5 via PayPal, that's how desperate I am!

[mgh]

try
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/travel/1112saguaro.rm

[DJMichaelAngelo]

try
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/travel/1112saguaro.rm

thanks! But it plays the wrong video :( It shows some biking trail segment, instead of the one I was looking for....? :confused:

[mgh]

went again-got a few more
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/mexican/tamales.rm
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/calibomb.rm
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/chocobowls.rm
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/chocorolls.rm
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/gnoche.rm
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/turkeycook.rm
rtsp://helix.azcentral.com/azcentral/home/cooking/turkeycut.rm
lots more there:)
simple really with firefox. right click just outside the video window and view source:devil:
Works with lots of sites:devil:

[squid_80]

None of those are the clip in question. The main clip is a flash clip, hence the rtmp:// prefix. I don't know how you could save it.

[foxyshadis]

Commercial demoware was all I could find that understands that rtmp protocol. All the freeware I found just bailed on it.

Holy smoke, Batman, it's 5,000 posts!

[squid_80]

OK I take it back, the player is a flash object (flowplayer.swf) and it grabs what appears to be a realmedia clip from rtmp://cp22499.edgefcs.net/ondemand/azcentral/news/0215covancemeet6pm. Don't know how to save it though.

[squid_80]

Alright, I have a .flv file of the clip saved on my hard drive. Any ideas how to turn it into something usable?

[setarip_old]

Assuming that it's legitimate to circumvent this proprietary protocol and download the video, read the following, which includes a link to a possible means of accomplishing this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Messaging_Protocol

[squid_80]

[Color=Blue]Assuming that it's legitimate to circumvent this proprietary protocol and download the video, read the following, which includes a link to a possible means of accomplishing this:
Done that already. Need to process the .flv file that I ended up with into something else.

[squid_80]

Thanks to Gabest's flv splitter I now an 8.54mb avi of the clip, with the audio in the original mp3 format and the video compressed with xvid at q2. DJMichaelAngelo - if you have somewhere for me to upload it or if you would just like it emailed direct to your yahoo address let me know. Alternatively I could send you the original 4mb .flv file if you wish.

[DJMichaelAngelo]

Thanks to Gabest's flv splitter I now an 8.54mb avi of the clip, with the audio in the original mp3 format and the video compressed with xvid at q2. DJMichaelAngelo - if you have somewhere for me to upload it or if you would just like it emailed direct to your yahoo address let me know. Alternatively I could send you the original 4mb .flv file if you wish.

*gasp* oh wow! I just now am checking this thread today. Dude, you are a GENIUS! You have no idea how many hours I spent trying to rip this segment into an avi file (or ANY type of saveable file). djmichaelangelo3@yahoo.com is my email address, if you could send it to me there I will buy you a car. (Okay, it'll be one of them little matchbox cars, but you get the idea!)

[stegre]

I was playing with this problem that night too and came up with a somewhat different solution using a different approach. Since it was getting late and DJMichaelAngelo had already posted, I didn't bother to post myself at the time. But I want a car too! ;)

No seriously, this is actually kind of an interesting alternative. Compared to what it sounds like DJ made, my resulting AVI has the disadvantage that you will need ffdshow installed with FLV enabled (http://ftypes.com/unrelated/ffd_flv.png) (I forget if that's a default), or perhaps some other FLV codec, but with that in place it will play fine in MPC, VLC, Windows Media Player, and probably anything else. In fact it'll play in VLC standalone, without ffdshow.

Now on the upside, my version is only half the filesize and is lossless from the original - the video was not re-encoded. For technical reasons the audio has to end up getting re-encoded, but that's no biggie considering it's just 22KHz 48kbps mono voice to begin with (the same thing it was re-encoded at).

I created it with mplayer, or more precisely it's sidekick "mencoder". It was only one step to get from the flv to the avi, though it wasn't exactly straightforward to come up with the correct command line - mencoder doesn't understand the framerate of the FLV, and if you want to avoid having it either skip frames or put in a zillion duplicate empty frames, yet still be synced with the audio, it's kinda tricky. FYI, after some analysis and trials, this is the command that made the file:

mencoder test.flv -noskip -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=0:br=48:mode=3 -ofps 15.440 -o covance.avi

and your final result is here: covance.avi (3.97MB) (http://ftypes.com/unrelated/covance.avi)

[DJMichaelAngelo]

I was playing with this problem that night too and came up with a somewhat different solution using a different approach. Since it was getting late and DJMichaelAngelo had already posted, I didn't bother to post myself at the time. But I want a car too! ;)

No seriously, this is actually kind of an interesting alternative. Compared to what it sounds like DJ made, my resulting AVI has the disadvantage that you will need ffdshow installed with FLV enabled (http://ftypes.com/unrelated/ffd_flv.png) (I forget if that's a default), or perhaps some other FLV codec, but with that in place it will play fine in MPC, VLC, Windows Media Player, and probably anything else. In fact it'll play in VLC standalone, without ffdshow.

Now on the upside, my version is only half the filesize and is lossless from the original - the video was not re-encoded. For technical reasons the audio has to end up getting re-encoded, but that's no biggie considering it's just 22KHz 48kbps mono voice to begin with (the same thing it was re-encoded at).

I created it with mplayer, or more precisely it's sidekick "mencoder". It was only one step to get from the flv to the avi, though it wasn't exactly straightforward to come up with the correct command line - mencoder doesn't understand the framerate of the FLV, and if you want to avoid having it either skip frames or put in a zillion duplicate empty frames, yet still be synced with the audio, it's kinda tricky. FYI, after some analysis and trials, this is the command that made the file:

mencoder test.flv -noskip -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=0:br=48:mode=3 -ofps 15.440 -o covance.avi

and your final result is here: covance.avi (3.97MB) (http://ftypes.com/unrelated/covance.avi)

Wow. You and Squid80 could start a company together - you are both such geniuses *lol* How did you ever learn stuff like this? I wish I had a friend here in town (Chandler, Arizona) who could sit me down and teach me all these neat little tricks for video ripping and conversion, etc. I think you're right about that FLV codec - I downloaded your .avi file and when my WMP version 11 opens it, the audio plays just fine but not the video! *lol* I know it's a problem on my end though, because my friend's computer plays the file with no problems. So my project for tomorrow (other than stealing some cars for you both) will be to figure out what codecs I'm missing, where to find them, and how to download them! (something I'm even less of an expert at) :p Thanks again!

[KoD]

For downloading various streamed files (rtsp, mms) as well as flash files (the latter ones in IE), there's a good free download manager: Orbit (http://www.orbitdownloader.com).

It's often updated too.

[squid_80]

Now on the upside, my version is only half the filesize and is lossless from the original - the video was not re-encoded. For technical reasons the audio has to end up getting re-encoded, but that's no biggie considering it's just 22KHz 48kbps mono voice to begin with (the same thing it was re-encoded at).
I had the opposite problem trying to use graphedit - the original mp3 audio would mux fine into an avi but I kept getting weird errors when trying to directly mux the original video stream. So I added an xvid encoder to the graph and ended up with an avi with drop frames padding the framerate to 25fps. Ran it thru virtualdub to remove the drop frames and it ended up being in sync at 15.040fps.

[stegre]

squid: Yeah, my first attempt wanted to run at like 200+ FPS and was 95% drop frames! That's when I started playing with the numbers. Oh, btw, sorry about mixing up your and DJ's names in prev post - got confused reading the quoted stuff.

DJ: just download "ffdshow_beta2a_20070322_clsid.exe" from here (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173941&package_id=199421&release_id=469925), start the install, & answer OK, OK, etc. It'll be installed & activated by default.

[DJMichaelAngelo]

Thanks! The video plays fine now (just needed those FLV type codecs apparently). That Orbit program looks interesting - there has to be a catch! *lol* Software that does all that it claims to do, but completely free? What's in it for them? How can the company afford to pay their webhosting bill and all their expenses? Almost makes me suspicious that there's spyware or something in it.... :confused:

[KoD]

I haven't noticed any spyware coming with that Orbit program, but the functionality is not as great as the website might suggest. When you encounter a video on a webpage for instance, it's nothing more than a link to a text file (with asx extension) with the real stream address inside mms://some_web_address_here/video_file.wmv. Orbit is not smart enough to read the asx file, so it will simply download the asx file. You have to open that asx file in notepad, copy the mms:// address and add this as a new download in Orbit. Now you finally have the video file downloaded.

[Booji Boy]

What about SDP?

http://sdp.ppona.com/

<s>I'm afraid to use it, same with Orbit. Is it clean?</s> Generally I don't trust closed source freeware that much.

EDIT: I've tested it. Process Monitor didn't reveal any suspicous activity. Quite neat this SDP Downloader.

[stegre]

I've used SDP too, and it is fine & works nice for mms, but only for mms. To help get this thread reorganized:

mms: This is a proprietary Microsoft protocol usually used with asx/asf/wmv. Despite being proprietary, SDP and other solutions will handle it nicely. This thread's title and DJ's original request did indeed involve asx/asf/wmv sent over mms protocol.

But - around the middle of the thread, DJ had a new question about a different video. The new one was FLV, and was streamed over Macromedia / Adobe's proprietary protocol, rtmp, which is neither mms nor rtsp.

For its part, rtsp is an openly documented "control protocol" (RFC 2326 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2326)) though, according to this wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rtsp), when used by RealNetworks (RealMedia), where you usually run into it, they embed their "RTP transport protocol" into it, which is proprietary. But I think their are a bunch of "solutions" out there for this too. However..

For rtmp, which is what DJ needed for his second request, the solutions are few & far between. The few, if only, that seem to exist are all commercial, as foxishadis noted earlier (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=973612#post973612)

But not to despair - the wikipedia entry for rtmp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Messaging_Protocol) claims it is currently being reversed by the "Red 5 Open Source Project" (http://osflash.org/red5). So we'll have to keep an eye on that.

[StreamRipper]

<edit mod: removed spam>

[Sharktooth]

if it's about flash videos you can get them using http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

[StreamRipper]

2Wilbert:
I don't think it was spam that you removed. And I don't think I should post several pages instead of linking to them (all flash stream recorders and their usage, URL finders, bugs of Orbit...). If you'd looked through the links, you'd know what I'm talking about.
Links in signutures to custom matrices and stuff like that must be more relevant to the thread

It is still a mistery for me why you deleted content instead of just deleting links.
And it is interesting how far would you go in recording RTMP streams using say the previous post?

[StreamRipper]

<edit mod: I left one link to your stuff in one of your posts above that you deleted, but you still had to post a new link. Well, congrats you are suspended now.>

[DJMichaelAngelo]

http://www.azfamily.com/video/?z=y&nvid=269216

I've spent an hour trying everything from looking for an .flv in the Temporary Internet Files folder (obvious solution, I know - and predictably unsuccesful) to "view source" and VLC conversion of media stream. Nothing. Best I was able to come up with is the video is hidden somewhere in here:

http://www.azfamily.com/sharedcontent/video/swf/VideoWidget_5.swf?video=/bi/www.azfamily.com/0831/080108_puppies.flv&clickThruUrl=null

...but darned if I know how to isolate it as a saveable file I can keep on my hard drive. Anyone feel up to a challenge? :p Any of you video-editing prodegies out there, if you can find a way to save this news segment as a stand-alone file (flv, avi, etc) I'll give you the phone # of that hot chick in the video clip *lol*