Windows Media Video (WMV) editing? (1 Viewer)

[MarkHastings]

Is there anything that can edit a WMV file? I have a WMV file that I need to edit and I'm finding that you can't.

I've heard people saying that Premiere 6.5 can do this. I don't have 6.5 at work (only at home) so I can't be certain and I need an answer by the end of the day.

I've seen a bunch of programs that can convert WMV to other formats. Any suggestions on a decent one?

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Mark,

Have you tried AviSynth? Their site is at Avisynth.org. This program is a frameserver. Here's how it works. After installed, you create a "frameserver script" in Notepad: simply a text file with the ".avs" extension. This file contains commands in the AviSynth script language, such as:

DirectShowSource("MyFile.WMV")

This avisynth script can be opened by programs that read AVI files, and as far as the app is concerned, it is opening an uncompressed AVI. This is because AviSynth decompresses the video and "serves" it to the application one frame at a time. You can drop your AVS file (remember, just a text file with the avs extension) onto your favorite media player and it will play as if it were a regular AVI. Other commands in your script can resize, cut, crop, edit, perform noise reduction, etc. Since Premere cannot open AVS files natively, there is a free plug-in that allows this function. I have not tried this with WMV files but I understand it does work. Unknown if this works on a file with DRM. Hope this helps!

 

[MarkHastings]

Thanks Rob, I'll check it out when I get back to work. I downloaded some conversion utility (I forget the name) and I made an AVI file with DivX 5 compression. It fit my needs right now, but I want something that works with Premiere so I don't have to go through all that conversion time.

The app was also shareware and I didn't want to have to buy any utilities if I can find a free way to do it.

 

[Scott Littlefield]

If you have Windows XP then you already own Windows Movie Maker, which edits .wmv files natively.