Convert WebEx Recordings To MP4 And Sync To iTunes

This guest post was written by, Alex Kah at Question Defense. He works as a technical consultant and is interested in helping people extend the life of their WebEx meetings. You can use this tutorial with recordings from Meeting Center and the new, free WebEx Meet beta.

Since many people have an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and use OSX on the Mac’s, I want to show you how to take a .WMV files to .MP4 format so it can be synced to your device or simply played in QuickTime on your Macintosh computer.

The steps below require you first convert the WebEx native .ARF or .WRF file into a .WMV. You can learn how to do that here.

Convert WMV Files Generated From ARF/WRF Files To MP4 Format

1. Download Any Video Converter: First download Any Video Converter from download.com by clicking this link. The file downloaded will be avc-free.exe which is the Any Video Converter installer.

2. Install Any Video Converter: Once avc-free.exe has been completely download double click on it to begin the installation process which will launch the Any Video Converter Install Wizard.

Click the Next button to continue installation of the Any Video Converter software which will allow us to convert the WMV file generated from the ARF/WRF WebEx files to MP4 format. The next screen in the AVC install wizard will be the AVC License Agreement.

After you understand the AVC License click the radio button next to “I Accept The Agreement” and then click the Next button to proceed to the next screen in the AVC setup wizard. On this next screen, use the default Destination Location for the application to be installed. Click the Next button to proceed.

Next you will be required to verify the title of the Windows start menu addition which will be added during the installation. Again the defaults should be fine. Click the Next button to continue.

The next screen in the Any Video Converter install wizard will simply ask about a desktop icon. If you want a AVC desktop icon then do not remove the check however if you do not want a AVC desktop icon then remove the check and then click the Next button to proceed.

After deciding about the desktop icon you will be asked if you want the Bing Toolbar installed during the AVC installation. I would suggest you select the radio button next to “Do Not Install Bing bar” then click the Next button to continue.

The next screen during the AVC install process will be a settings review. If all of the configuration settings are correct click Install. Depending on the type of computer you have it could take a couple minutes. Once it is done a verification screen will display. Make sure you have “Launch Any Video Converter” checked and then click the Finish button to launch AVC.

3. Launch Any Video Converter: If AVC did not launch after installation or you already had Any Video Converter installed then please launch the application from the start menu.

4. Modify AVC Video Profile: Once the application is launched, you will need to modify the video profile. Any Video Converter comes with many different video profiles: Mobile Phone MPEG-4 Movies, Flash Video Movies, Flash SWF, DVD Video NTSC Movie, DVD Video PAL Movie, MPEG-1 Movies, MPEG-II Movie, and more. Technically you could convert the WMV file, which was originally the ARF/WRF WebEx file, to many different formats but for this example we will be converting the WMV file to MP4 using the Mobile Phone>MPEG-4 Movie profile (pick from the drop down menu in the upper right corner).

5. Add Video To AVC: Now click the Add Video button located near the top left corner which will open up a Windows Explorer window for you to locate the WMV file you want to convert to MP4. Choose the WMV file you want to convert.

6. Convert WMV To MP4: Once the video is loaded, you can start encoding the WMV file to MP4 by clicking the Convert button. Once the conversion begins you will see the status to the right of the video.

7. View MP4 Video: When the status in the above example image gets to 100% then the WMV video has been converted to MP4 and can be picked up in the “Any Video Converter” folder in your My Documents folder. The below path would be for the user “WebEx” on Windows 7 but this may vary slightly for each version of Windows. Default Any Video Converter Converted Videos Folder Path: C:\Users\WebEx\Documents\Any Video Converter. 

Once inside the Any Video Converter folder there will be sub folders such as AVI, MPEG, or MOBILE_MP4. In this example our converted video will be located in MOBILE_MP4 so enter that folder and double click the video to verify that it plays correctly. You can always go back and modify the video profile to see if you can get a higher resolution, etc.

8. Transfer To Your iDevice: Plug in your device to the computer you converted the video on. Open iTunes on your computer and drag the video file located in step 7 into the Movies folder of your iTunes Library. Make sure that Movies are set to Sync All Movies from the iTunes Library to the iDevice. After the device has synced with the computer the video file should be available to view on your device as shown in the below image.

 You did it! Now you can view the WebEx presentation, which was an ARF/WRF file converted to WMV and then converted to MP4!

Comments

[Axel Albrecht]

The Webex ARF player now itself can convert to MP4. no need to get an additional converter. Simply save the ARF to your desktop and open with the free NBR player. Now choose file and then covert to MP4.

[David Leslie]

Two questions:

When you record the webex session, what settings do you use to ensure they will be viewable on a mobile device?

With the new network player, there is a convert to mp4 option but does anyone know its output settings and if they can be adjusted?