I’ve received a few comments and emails in response to my previous post, how to import gotomeeting wmv recordings into camtasia studio. In several cases, folks trying to get their GoToMeeting and/or GoToWebinar WMV recordings imported into Camtasia using this method run into an error message stating:
"The requested video codec is not installed on this system"
In my experience, this is caused by trying to work with a WMV file in GoToMeeting format, as opposed to a plain Windows Media Player file. Huh?? Well, as it turns out, GTM/GTW produces two different types of recordings, both of which are saved as WMV files.
To add to the confusion, Citrix makes a GoToMeeting codec available that any reasonable person would suppose would fix the “codec is not installed” error. Not! The reason they make it available is so that people can play the GTM files without installing the entire GTM software package. I’m not sure of the technical reasons for this, but the only thing I’ve ever seen able to use those files is Windows Media Player itself. I imagine it has something to do with DirectShow Filters or some such.
To maximize compatibility and usability you should select the “Convert to Windows Media Player file” option in the “Recording” section of the GTM Preferences panel. I think the only reason the “Record in GoToMeeting format” option is even presented is because to produce the more compatible file literally does take an extra conversion step that can take a long time depending on the length of your recording and how powerful your PC is.
So what do you do if you’ve got a file in the GoToMeeting format and you want to use it in Camtasia? Good question!
I tried a bunch of the old standby tools (WM Encoder and Stream Editor, VirtualDub, etc.) just for kicks and didn’t have any success with a GTM file. I was able to get the video cleaned up by running the file through WM Encoder and then through Stream Editor, but VirtualDub choked on the WMA V2 audio.
I haven’t tested this, but if I were in this situation and exhausted all other options, I’d try to open up the file in Windows Media Player and use Camtasia to record the screen as if you were making a screen capture. Audio is the main challenge in this scenario, since you don’t want to record from your speakers to your microphone. A physical patch cable from the headphone jack to line-in may be one option, but not perfect since the digital-to-analog and analaog-to-digital processes are both lossy/noisy.
In the days of XP it used to be pretty easy to do an “audio loopback” aka “Stereo Mix” aka “Wave Out Mix” in which you’d tell the computer to record directly from the soundcard, but this option is getting hard to find in Vista because it can be used to circumvent DRM. You may have a soundcard that still supports supports stereo mix, in which case you’d enable it via the control panel. If not, Google around and you may be able to find an XP version of your soundcard driver that will work in compatibility mode. There are also a number of commercial software options that claim to enable audio loopback. Virtual Audio Cable is one that I came across.
(A couple of other thoughts: Citrix support may have a tool be willing to provide a tool to do the conversion after-the-fact, or they may have an idea of what tools can do it. Also, it may be possible to trick GTM into doing it for you by swapping the file you want to convert with a new one just as GTM is about to convert it, but the timing will be tricky 
In any case, good luck, and let us know how you fare!
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
Still can’t get this to work, keep getting the transcription init error, Citrix now has a version 457 so hope it wasn’t just compatible with the other 3xx versions.
Anyone cracked this?
I have no problem getting the .wmv file to open and play in Camtasia just having a problem rendering the project to a swf format, it freezes at 11%. Any idea what to do to help push this through?
I have no problem getting the .wmv file to open and play in Camtasia just having a problem rendering the project to a swf format, it freezes at 11%. Any idea what to do to help push this through?
Want your GoToMeeting Videos in Camtasia? You can open the GoToMeeting *.wmv file in Windows Movie Maker. It shows as a “collection” of videos and you can then save individual “movies” which can be manipulated by Camtasia. Kind of a pain, but it's better than nothing!
I took this from benlittler <dot> com, but it has worked twice for me with no problems:
Fortunately, there is a solution that worked for me — use an application from GoToMeeting called “g2mtranscoder” which allows you to convert the file from GTM format to standard WMV. Here’s how I did it in Windows 7:
1. Navigate to your GoToMeeting program files folder. Typically this will be in C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting320.
2. Copy your GoToMeeting recording to this directory.
3. Open the command line. On Vista / Windows 7, click the Start button and in the search box type: cmd and press Enter; in Windows XP, click the Start button, select Run, and type: cmd and press Enter.
4. Type: cd C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting320 and press Enter. This should take you to the GTM directory.
5. Type: g2mtranscoder source=GoToMeetingRecording.wmv (replace with the name of your GTM video).
Also, it apparently doesn't matter what number your gotomeeting file is (for example: C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting### the numbers can be anything).
Susan – THANK YOU! Perfect instructions…worked great the first time. I really appreciate this; someone else recorded for me without the correct setting and my video editing guy is on a Mac – so he needs the correct format. Many thanks!
Legendary – thank you. I’ve wasted a day on this already!
Hey Derak, I don't have C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting366
What I do have is:
C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting320
C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting405
C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting416
Let me know what you think.
Thanks!
Madalyn
The go-to-meeting codec installer places the files needed to rip these video files.
Just copy the dll files from the C:Program FilesCitrixGoToMeeting366 into the codecs folder of your video editor and you should be able to read these files.
I'm having the same issue Woody. Did you figure it out yet? I'm stumped.
Thanks a lot this is very useful for me….now able to convert easily.
It work for me.
Steps
1. First move the wmv file to the same folders as g2mtranscoder.exe
2. then for DOS/CMD run C:\Program Files\Citrix\GoToMeeting\320>g2mtranscoder.exe source=Webinar.wmv
Tommy Carl
I have a wmv file that I imported into Camtasia for editing. Several strange things are happening. Callouts do not display during edit playback unless I stop and restart the playback. Sometimes the callouts do not fade out unless the play is stopped and restarted. When trying to produce the video the rendering hangs at 0.1%. I do not know how the wmv was originally recorded. It vary well could have been with GoTo meeting. Do you think I have the problem that is being discussed here??????
I ended up trying “microsoft expressions encoder”, which also can start with the g2m3 encoded file, but from there straight to h264, various wmv encoders etc. There’s a free trial but it’s fairly crippled, but you can get it as part of microsoft expressions web studio 3 ($79 upgrade, eligible if you have office 2007, adobe cs anything etc.).
At first glance expressions encoder actually looks pretty cool, so my guess is that I’ll just leave it in the (irritatingly proprietary g2m3 format) for recording, then use this to produce each of the other formats – this is nice because it’ll avoid one transcoding step, always good from a quality perspective.
I used the run command
For the transcoder, I put quotes (“) before the c:\program.. . . . and after the .exe at the end.
For source, I had to no quotes neither before the c:\ . . . nor after the .wmv.
If I was to be asked, this not-compatable-with-anything default setting is a pretty dumb idea. Then their FAQ doesn’t even answer the question. Lost 3 days of time trying to undo what shouldn’t have needed doing in the first place.
Thanks for posting the solutions!
Hey, I’m getting the transcoder error as well…
I’ve tried using DOS short names, my file name is whitt.wmv… I see that there’s no solid solution and I’ve basically tried everything that I’ve read on this list. Just wondering if in one day someone figured it out.
Thanks!
It looks like the transcoder needs DOS short names to run properly (no spaces). Anything longer than 8 characters or with spaces, has the spaces removed and after 6 characters and “~1″ is added. So in your case, you would want the source command would be something like “source=c:\docume~1\myname\myname~1\myvide~1\class.wmv”
You can see the short names by opening a command prompt and typing “dir /w”
Hey I’ve been trying forever to get my .wmv to convert in the g2m transcoder.exe with no luck. I just keep getting the transcoding inialization error. I someone could please explain to me what I’m doing wrong so I can get this to work I know I’m so close I’m just missing 1 or 2 steps here:
Im using 320 on windows xp and what I have is a meeting that was recorded in the bad format so that you can’t edit it at all so I’m trying to use the conerter to fix my problem.
I renamed the file to just class.wmv to get rid of spaces as I heard this was one of the problems and then copied the video to program files\citrix\ go to meeting\class.wmv I also tried putting it in the sub folder 320 with no luck.
I’m using the run window and here’s what I have in the prompt line
“C:\Program Files\Citrix\GoToMeeting\320\g2mtranscoder.exe” source=C:\Documents and Settings\myname\mynamedocuments\My Videos\class.wmv
I’ve tried it with different spacing and asterisks in different places and that just does nothing this is the only combo that I see actually gets results. But it just immediately pops up a window with a heading transcoder error- gotomeeting codec and the info “transcoding initialization error.”
If anyone knows what I’m doing wrong or what to try I’d greatly appreciate it!!! and I’ll post back if it worked so everyone else with the same problem as me will hopefully get an answer as well
I got the “Transcoding Initialization error” so I renamed my .mov file to not have spaces in it and no longer got the error. I am using 366 and it is working so far.
Glad the post helped, Linda! Garage Band sounds like a good idea. One thing we’ve done a few times when we have slides-only webinars is to export the slides as images and set them to our ‘backup’ audio in Camtasia or a tool like that. GB would probably work as well.
Thanks so much for this post. We’ve been struggling to repair/improve GTW recordings for months, spending hours re-creating the visuals to go with a separately-recorded audio track that we always do as a backup. We always record as a Windows Media file, and the audio always comes out sounding bad, in spite of our technical tests and tinkering. The WME Streaming Editor fixed the WMV file so that we could silence its audio track, add in the track we record in Garage Band, make minor edits, and output successfully. Yay!
Great tip! I was struggling with MS Producer for 5 hours before I was able to find your tip. Thanks!!!!!
Sam T.
Thanks for the previous guides.
I hope this will help some of you, there is a program installed with gotomeeting called g2mtranscoder.exe, to convert the file to “Windows Media Player file” format simply run this program with the parameter source=path_and_filename_here and your file will be converted.
e.g.
C:\Program Files\Citrix\GoToMeeting\320>g2mtranscoder.exe source=C:\Path to my videos\myvideo.wmvI have tried this with a seemingly newer version (366 rather than 320) and it doesn’t seem to work. Anyone know where to get hold of the ’320′ version (or a version that is known to work)?
Thanks,
Ole
I tried this on one of my G2M WMVs… g2mtranscoder.exe would be running in Task Manager, but after when it was done, I couldn’t find the newly transcoded WMV.
Where does it save to?
Steve….EUREEEEKA
You have just ended a 2 year nightmare!
I have been editing GoToWebinars in Sony Vegas, and about May of 2007 the “converted to standard .wmv” files stopped being editable. I would import and it would just sit there as I watched the Vegas application’s Mem Usage in Windows Task Manager sky rocket until my RAM was maxed. Camtasia and Windows Movie Maker would similarly choke. Citrix blamed my software but would not recommend any editing software that would reliably edit their converted .wmv. The best they could offer was to use another program (Camtasia) to do the capturing!
I was reduced to rebuilding slide shows in Vegas as imported JPGs and using the soundtrack (which I could salvage if I quickly deleted the video track before my RAM was maxed.)
…but then I got a 50+ slide presentaion with 5+ animations per slide. It drove me to Google and then Sam’s site here where I discovered the magic of re-converting the (supposedly) converted wmv. Viola! I can drag wmv in, Mem Usage stays below 100 Megs like it should, and it appears perfectly editable. One note: for me the transcoder was in C:\Program Files\Citrix\GoToMeeting\366….a version/build thing I suspect that may change again when I visit GoTo and get the software re-installed as it does each time.
Not sure what the GTW problem is. I suspect the conversion to standard WMV (which I do religiously by the way)never actually, or correctly took place. I would suspect maybe some version/build codec incompatibilty, as in it was recorded in one build but I might edit on another build….but the WMVs that are editable are always editable, the ones that choke, always choke. At any rate I am very grateful for this tidbit.
I run the command and then it’s taking a lot of memory in my system.
And also there’s no indication when it’ll finish converting except for the initial mesasge stating that i’ll take 20hrs.
Steve, is it that long?
Mel, After I posted I realised that I’d put in a link to the old version! ooops! Although, after looking at the 2 files they have made no changes between the two versions.
Tommy, I’m not sure why you are having issues, I just tried the command again on a 65meg file and when the program started it showed an estimated time of 10 hours and using 200meg memory but eventually settled on 1 hour and the progress bar started moving.
Tried the Media Stream fix as well as the g2mtranscoder.exe fix, but both will result in “hang” when publishing to Camtasia.
I’m going to submit a ticket to TechSmith as well to Citrix.
Anyone successfully done this?
Steve, it give me an error – “Transcoding Initialization error”
We are having quality issues with our recordings of webinars. Are there any tips we should know to make sure the quality is as good as possible?
We record into windows format. The host is remote and makes me the presenter. Not sure if being local or remote affects quality. Would my screen resolution have any effect either?
Thanks for any guidance you can provide.
John
Our biggest quality issues have been with the audio. If we remember we try to record audio separately with a handheld voice recorder and 9 times out of 10 we end up using that audio. It’s a bit of a pain and adds steps to the workflow, but the result is a much better webinar archive.
Anything in particular you’re running into?
here are the steps I use that works well, just takes some time.
1. Recorded the video with GoToMeeting/Webinar Remember to check the convert to Windows media Player file. (pictured below)
if you for get this step, copy the file into the GTM directory and run the “g2mtranscoder.exe” source=
2. Use Windows Media Encoder to convert the original G2M3 codec files. This is a free download from Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en&Hash=5RCcY3DKcv6Mw1BezqopTT41dIJldcQwSzWMMnwInoa5oN5nMmUYl7uA24Ac6tYUYQIbhFZHDgONhmQ5NpYr3g%3d%3d
3. Use a editing software such as Windows Movie Maker (comes with Windows Platforms) or Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp)
Top 5 free video editing software can be found here http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/top-5-free-video-editing-software-review.html (I have only tested Camtasia)
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Ole, try leaving the “to foo.wmv” off the command line, just g2mtrascoder.exe source=foo.wmv