AsfBin is an old Asfcut successor. That means, no newer version of AsfCut will be realeased. Because AsfCut was using Windows Media Format SDK, which contained quite serious bugs which I wasn't able to work around, I decided to write my own, so to say, SDK. ;-)

AsfBin is a command line utility for cutting out fragments, joining, editing and repairing ASF files. AsfBin can be applied to any ASF file, that is, not only to those with ASF extension but also those with WMV and WMA extensions. Precision, speed and the maximum fidelity was my top priorities in desing of the AsfBin software. Not to mention, of course, reliabilty of this tool.

The whole operation is performed without recompression of the whole file. On a user demand, only a couple of first samples may be recompressed to give the ultimate precision in cutting. Because of that, the video quality is not degraded and the resulting file remains as unchanges as possible.

In the previous versions of the result of an operation was always one media file. But since version 1.5 a -sep option was introduced to allow a user to save each selected range to a separate file. Other unique feature is the ability to recreate key frames basing on progressive ones, thus allowing to cut the video at any desired time position. Because AsfBin do not rely on ASF file index, it can skip damaged area and repair the data stream starting from first good samples.

Features:

• cutting fragments out of all ASF files (*.asf, *.wmv,...),
• precise file joining,
• repairing damaged and/or unseekable ASF files (*),
• loseless processing,
• creating loops,
• ability to remove streams,
• adjusting packet size,
• adjusting buffer window,
• ability to removing scripts, markers,
• saving segments to a separate ASF files,
• inverting selection, so you can easily point the fragment to be deleted,
• adding markers and commands,
• delaying selected streams (not necessarily audio streams),
• printing out information on key frames location and index entries,
• control over the type of indexing,
• cutting fragments adjusted precisely to key frames locations,
• optimizing packet size,
• debugging ASF files,...

1. Corrected issue with processing over 4GB files.
2. Corrected problem with scripts not beeing copied from the original file if copying range was not specified.
3. Corrected the issue with the script samples distance limitation that was set to 65s. Now it can be unlimited.

1. Totally rewritten sample packing algorithm so even multiaudio files with no video are packed optimally. This will also fix problems with files containing script commands and some issues with streaming ASF files via Windows Media Server.
2. Finally added DMO support when recompressing video. By using one of two new switches -vcm and -dmo a desired technology can be selected. By default it is VCM.
3. Added -infohdr switch to show all info from ASF header.
4. Added -optps switch that calculates the optimal size of the packet to minimize data padding.
5. Corrected timing of script commands and markers stored in the header after cutting out fragments from an original file when actual start time differs from demanded time due to distand key frame location.
6. Removed size limitation of record data in metadata objects in header.

1. The total file size info kept in the ASF header was not properly updated. This resulted in lack of seeking possibilities when streaming processed file via Windows Media Server.
2. Bug connected with processing files containing script command stream corrected. The total time spread of all samples gathered in a single packet could go beyond 65536 ms, what was against ASF specification.
3. Asfbin was losing last script command sample. This bug is corrected in this version.

1. FINALLY! After 3 years! Solved the mistery behind the old tape effect in the Windows Media Player - defeated buggy jitter correction algorithm in the MS WMPlayer produtcs! It was possible by adding audio decompression feature to asfbin and thus real sample duration measurement became possible. An advanced junction optimization algorithm was implement resulting in smooth connections between audio tracks of joined ASF files.
2. Added new switches allowing to set creation time of a resulting file to the time of the source file properly corrected by the start time offset (-act). Second related switch is -nots which causes all sample times remain as in original files.
3. Added possibility to process files still recorded by live stream recording software or WMS archive plugin. Other corrections was made in order to repair almost all cases of damaged files.
4. Optimized file processing. Time spared thanks to those optimizations is used to calculate precise audio junctions (this needs some audio samples to be uncompressed).
5. Some minor issues with segment cutting and joining were corrected.
6. Thousands of tests was performed to find and correct any existing bugs.

1. New quality in cutting ASF files! AsfBin is capable to cut files at any position with the accuracy to one video frame regardless there is a key frame or not, while maintaining maximum fidelity to the original. To enable this feature use -rkf switch. This is not enabled by default because so far not all video formats are supported.
2. To perform system configuration check in order to enable as many codecs as possible for AsfBin use -cfg switch. AsfBin performs this check anyway, but only once for given Windows configuration.
3. Improved recovery of damaged ASF files.

1. Ability to save each segment to a separate ASF file using -sep switch.
2. Inverting selection, so you can easily point the fragment to be deleted.
3. Adding markers and commands specified by a text file.
4. Delaying selected streams (not necessarily audio streams). Information on stream numbers can be obtained by using -info switch.
5. New version can list all key frames with their time time location. This allows to select more precisely the cutting time of segments.
6. Control over the type of the created index. New switch -sionly and improved -forceindex.
7. A new switch -ebkf causes a fragment to end precisely just before the next key frame.
8. Major improvements in parsing engine as I received a number of ASFs which couldn't be repaired by the version 1.0.3, so I was able to corrent problems and finally make a new asfbin be able to repair them all. Of course some files were so damaged that even with an expert support it could be hard to do this, if possible at all.
9. Speed improvements especially for improperly build ASF files.
10. Code review also unveiled quite many bugs that wasn't reported yet.

1. Improved packet data repair routines. Some damages (1-3 bytes long) withing packet or sample data can be repaired.
2. Improved searching for time range withing data packets when some packets are damaged or not conforming ASF specification.
3. Removed bug causing script commands not to be written.
4. Correcting bug causing bad padding data handling. Speeding up packets reading.
5. Other improvements of data packets reading.
6. Improved header reading routines. Asfbin is much more error-proof when it comes to header parsing.
7. Asfbin can now index files larger than 4GB.
8. When connecting a file with the script commands or markers with a file having no such objects, asfcut was crashing. This bug is removed.

1. Major Win95, 98, Me incompatibilities fixed. The function for opening files were Unicode version only. That caused no input file could be opened by asfbin in the Win9x. That proofs clearly that asfbin 1.0.1 wasn't "strongly" tested under Win9x enviroment. ;-)
2. Major improvements in a header parsing code. Now some errors in the header will cause only minimal loss of data.
3. Code review detected many weak points, where application might crash.
4. Limit to pack only one audio sample in a packet was removed. The limit was introduced because some players were loosing audio when playing resulting files. And I supposed that the lack of this limitation was causing such a behavior. It was not true. Also processing of some files could be very slow.
5. Files with empty streams (with no samples in it) were processed terribly slow. This bug is already removed.
6. Removed a bug connected with indexing of files having hidded streams.
7. When removing a stream the information on bitrate mutual exclusion wasn't updated. Now it is correct.
8. In some very rare case packets were built inefficiently breaching ASF specification. Also for some very large packet sizes, payload count could overflow the limit of 64 payload per packet. Already correct.

1. Corrected minor bug in the displaying duration of processed segments. The on-screen message said alway that duration was to the end. The output files weren't affected by this bug.
2. Corrected bugs when reading segments from segments file.
3. Corrected bug cousing file not to be written when the first sample time was smaller than the preroll time.

[SWITCHES] are as follow:

<time> in general is given in seconds, but it accepts following formats as well:
  1:59:45.35 = 1 h, 59 min, 45s, 35 hundredths, 3:30 = 3 min, 30 sec.,
  1023.101 = 1023 sec. and 101 thousandths, etc.
 


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Examples of usage:

1. To join two ASF files into one big please type:
      asfbin -i first.asf -i second.asf -o big.asf
   
   
2. To cut out a fragment from a bigger ASF file please type:
      asfbin -i big.asf -o part.asf -start 10:03.045 -duration 30.01
   
   
3. To cut some fragment from a file that begins in the middle and lasts to the end of file simply give only -start parameter without duration.
      asfbin -i big.asf -o endpart.asf -start 5:45
   
   
4. To extract two segments from one bigger ASF file and put in a one file please type:
      asfbin -i big.asf -o smaller.asf -start 1:15 -dur 4:00 -start 10:15 120
   
   
5. To join many ASF files into one big You can also use input file list:
      asfbin -l files.lst -o bigone.asf
   
   
6. To work on the list of ASF files like on the one big file and to cut some fragments from it, please specify:
      asfbin -l files.lst -o parts.asf -s segments.lst
   
   
7. To delay audio stream by 350ms type:
      asfbin -i input.asf -o output.asf -adelay 0.35
   
   
8. To advance stream number 4 by 250ms type:
      asfbin -i input.asf -o output.asf -sdelay 4 -0.25
   
   
9. To join two ASF files into one big please type knowing that the second file may contain progressive frames that are a continuation of the first file, type:
   (E.g. your encoder software may save streams in segmented file, each of size 50MB. In that case using -cvb may be helpful.)
      asfbin -i first.asf -i second.asf -o big.asf -cvb
   
   
10. To remove low bitrate audio and video streams assuming that those are respectively streams number 1 and 3, invoke command:
       asfbin -i input.asf -o output.asf -nostr 1,3
    
    
11. To extract 10 time ranges from the long input file and save them under names: short01.asf, short02.asf and so on, assuming that time ranges are kept in timeranges.txt file, invoke the command below. We also want each file to be unique.
       asfbin -i long.asf -l timeranges.txt -sep -o short{00}.asf -unique
    
    
12. To print out the information on precise location of all key frames in the input file please run:
       asfbin -i input.asf -infokf
    
    
13. To repeat a selected time range two times please run the command:
       asfbin -i test.asf -o big.asf -start 10 -dur 15 -repeat 1
    
    
14. To print out the information on index entries in the input file please run:
       asfbin -i input.asf -infoidx -details > some.log
    
    
15. If you want to divide file into several segments, send it via e-mail or in any other way and then join it together with no losses follow the instructions:
    
       asfbin -i large.wmv -o partA.wmv -y -start 0 -dur 10 -ebkf
       asfbin -i large.wmv -o partB.wmv -y -start 10 -dur 10 -ebkf
       asfbin -i large.wmv -o partC.wmv -y -start 20 -dur 10 -ebkf
       asfbin -i large.wmv -o partD.wmv -y -start 30 -dur 10 -ebkf
    
    and join it together again:
    
       asfbin -i partA.wmv -i partB.wmv -i partC.wmv -i partD.wmv -o large.wmv -y -istart