importing WMV files into Encoder on a mac

[Denez McAdoo]

Adobe Media Encoder says that it doesn't recognize this file type when I try to import WMV files for conversion. I'm guessing this is a mac issue more then an Adobe issue, since WMV should be a major file type, but Apple has no desire to support a Windows product.

But in any case, Encoder is a app that is designed to ingest and spit out codecs, so I'm a bit disappointed by this. Anyway, how to I get Encoder on a mac to ingest WMV files?

-denez

[Battle Vaughan]

This app worked nicely for us: Official Windows Media Player on the Mac - Overview - Telestream Flip4Mac

The pro version does 2 pass encoding for export.

[Denez McAdoo]

for real? I have to pay money to convert WMV files on a Mac?

I assumed that this was another attempt by Apple to lock out Windows, but since it seems to be on the Windows side (via a third party) that the charge for transcending is coming from, this makes me think it is an attempt for Windows to squeeze out more money.

Frankly, I've compressed an hour long project in h.264 using quicktime's .mov, and also also in Windows wmv, and found wmv much better looking in a much smaller file size. But not being able to play or transcode these files on a mac means I will often have to sacrifice quality for playability.... Is Windows uninterested in competing with .mov's universal status?!?!

sorry for the rant. I'm more a PC guy, but sometimes...

-denez

[Juan A. Diaz]

Interesting... I've experienced this too...

In my case, I discovered that it seemed to be related to the application that originally rendered the WMV file. For example, not a single WMV rendered from Corel Video Studio (formerly Ulead) was able to be ingested into Adobe Media Encoder (tried 5.0 & 5.5), regardless of the export settings used in the Corel app. In my case, I wanted to cross render the WMVs to FLV for use in a WordPress embedded player, and did not have original Corel project files to redo the export in another format.

However, other WMVs, for example a WMV exported from Adobe Premiere Pro, were able to be imported. A casual test of WMV files downloaded from the Internet produced similar results - some could be imported, some could not.

Sorry, I never could figure out a solution, other than use a different product to do the transcode.

[Battle Vaughan]

Ok, then, Google is your friend: ?wmv conversion for mac

there are a number of shareware/freeware apps claiming to handle this conversion. I have no experience with them, thus I recommended the solution that I know works.

BTW, Flip4Mac is a third party program, neither MS or Apple make anything out of it. They have their proprietary video formats and that's just life.