Play WMV on Kubuntu 14.04

Just a few days ago I had to work with some multimedia files shared through one of my IT teams at the university. Since I’m a Linux user among Windows users, sometimes we have to “clean up” after some files that Windows systems have a tendency to produce. One such situation involves both wmv files and mp3 files that come from Microsoft software products that don’t seem to like to play well with Linux systems; here’s how to get around that.

Checking the properties of the wmv files we find this added “baggage” that doesn’t need to be there. A little research on ASF produced from Wikipedia comes back with:

Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Windows Media framework.

So what we need to do is “clean” the file and remove the baggage out that is preventing us from playing the file just as any other format.We can do this easily by using a program called Format Junkie which may not easily be found from the Ubuntu Software Center but can be located with instructions on how to install through any web search; don’t worry, the binaries are available.

The interface is super easy to figure out so just add the file with the extra “bugs” in it and select the output type from the drop down. To change the output directory select Edit at the top and go into the Properties. If it seems like it’s not doing anything just be patient, it’s working.

Above is the screenshot of the “cleaned” file with the bugs missing. I changed the format type in this example but it’s easy to keep the type if one wants to. Below is VLC playing the file which once wouldn’t do anything for me on Kubuntu 14.04.

This file was originally a ppt that I converted to a wmv using MSO2010 then needed to inspect the output prior to having it hosted online.

As always, I hope this tutorial helps some others get around certain file types on their Linux systems as well so they can press forward with whatever projects they may be working on. In retrospect, wouldn't it be so much easier if all our operating systems could just play nice with each other?

Update 1/15/2015:

For those who would prefer not to rely on a GUI based format converter, try pacpl. This program is written in Perl and supports a substantial number of formats.

http://vorzox.wix.com/pacpl