For those that do not know, G2M3 is a special video codec used by GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar for recording. It is only playable in Windows Media Player and there is suppose to be a plug-in for Quicktime under MAC. It has caused so much frustration these past few weeks in a task I was assigned.
We implemented a new video help section, and we had an archive of old GoToMeeting recorded sessions. The videos were all in WMV format utilizing the G2M3 video codec.
None of the video converters available for WMV to FLV (flash video) could handle the video codec properly. Most would fatally crash. That is where the adventure began in finding a way to convert G2M WMV video files into something that was more exportable.
The first thing I tried was ffmpeg since it can handle almost anything. It failed immediately when trying to convert it. At least it was nice enough to give me a reason why. It said the video stream was unsupported.
After trying several converters, I had almost given up. Until I dug deep into Google searches and came up with a post that shed some light on how to fix the problem. It appears the most converters do not interface with some back-end Windows Media Player functionality to decode the video of some WMV codecs during conversion. I did find something that did, and that was a utility called Windows Media Encoder.
WME was designed to stream Windows Media out to a Windows stream sever, but it can re-encode WMV using standard Windows Media 9 video and audio codecs. It is also free download and use.
This was not the end of journey for this task. The FLV converter we use does apparently support one of the Windows Media 9 codecs. It supports newer WMV codecs, just not the old codecs. I had to re-encode the WMV to another more suitable format.
I chose to just convert the WMV into MPG with the aid of TMPEGenc. This software is also free to use as long as MP2 encoding it not the main goal. After all these old video files were converted to MPG format, our FLV converter worked.
The lesson in this situation is to set the GoToMeeting settings to record in standard WMV format not the Default G2M3 Format. After testing, I found out the standard WMV works fine with our FLV converter.
I hope this helps anyone out there who plans on using G2M for any sort of video tutorials in SWF or FLV format. I should also note that Citrix is aware that the G2M3 is incompatible with Linux and any Windows or Mac box that does not have this codec installed. Keep that in mind when you use the product.
We implemented a new video help section, and we had an archive of old GoToMeeting recorded sessions. The videos were all in WMV format utilizing the G2M3 video codec.
None of the video converters available for WMV to FLV (flash video) could handle the video codec properly. Most would fatally crash. That is where the adventure began in finding a way to convert G2M WMV video files into something that was more exportable.
The first thing I tried was ffmpeg since it can handle almost anything. It failed immediately when trying to convert it. At least it was nice enough to give me a reason why. It said the video stream was unsupported.
Stream #0.2: Video: G2M3 / 0x334D3247
After trying several converters, I had almost given up. Until I dug deep into Google searches and came up with a post that shed some light on how to fix the problem. It appears the most converters do not interface with some back-end Windows Media Player functionality to decode the video of some WMV codecs during conversion. I did find something that did, and that was a utility called Windows Media Encoder.
WME was designed to stream Windows Media out to a Windows stream sever, but it can re-encode WMV using standard Windows Media 9 video and audio codecs. It is also free download and use.
This was not the end of journey for this task. The FLV converter we use does apparently support one of the Windows Media 9 codecs. It supports newer WMV codecs, just not the old codecs. I had to re-encode the WMV to another more suitable format.
I chose to just convert the WMV into MPG with the aid of TMPEGenc. This software is also free to use as long as MP2 encoding it not the main goal. After all these old video files were converted to MPG format, our FLV converter worked.
The lesson in this situation is to set the GoToMeeting settings to record in standard WMV format not the Default G2M3 Format. After testing, I found out the standard WMV works fine with our FLV converter.
I hope this helps anyone out there who plans on using G2M for any sort of video tutorials in SWF or FLV format. I should also note that Citrix is aware that the G2M3 is incompatible with Linux and any Windows or Mac box that does not have this codec installed. Keep that in mind when you use the product.
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