rendering Windows Media files

tom_streeter wrote on 11/28/2001, 5:33 PM
When rendering a timeline as Windows Media (either a custom template or a prepackaged one), the resulting file plays fine locally or from a network-mounted drive on the server. If I attempt to stream the file via an MMS request from the server (running WMS4.1) it returns an error message complaining of a corrupted file. If I take the same file and run it through the command-line ASFchop utility, the resulting file is somewhat smaller and will stream just fine from the streaming server.

Anyone else see this behavior? I've submitted it to support, but thought I'd ask around here as well.

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 11/29/2001, 3:16 AM
this may not help, but it's related.

for some reason, SF apps have trouble rendering ASF's with markers and regions. if you have regions on your time-line, you should delete them before rendering an ASF that is supposed to include markers. i discovered this problem years ago. i first noticed it in Sound Forge 4. i don't know if it's an MS issue or what, but it's still present in VV3.

the work-around is to delete regions before rendering, then hit undo after rendering to get them back. otherwise, the file will often come out with no markers at all, or with missing markers. this doesn't happen every single time. sometimes the regions come out just like markers in the asf file. but maybe half the time, you get no markers at all.

- ben (cheesehole)
tom_streeter wrote on 11/29/2001, 7:21 AM
I've tried going with and without markers altogether with no success, but it was a theory I'd considered.

Besides reporting this to SF support I also posted this on MS's WMTALK list. Two other folks were able to reproduce the bug. MS is going to follow up with SF. I suspect this problem won't be with us too long.

I've discovered a workaround (in case anyone comes across this posting): force the munged file to be rewritten by another app. I prefer the ASFchop command line utility, but using the Advanced Script Indexer works as well (just "save as" and viola', new file).