Friday, September 17, 2010

The Cisco WebEx ARF Player for OS X - convert to MP4

Welcome to the world's only documentation on the Cisco WebEx ARF Player for OS X.

You have come here because you downloaded a WebEx ARF file. These are used by some training companies. You brought it home, and you want to put it on your Mac so you can convert the ARF to .MP4 and transfer it to your iPhone. Perhaps you know that the ARF Player for Windows will export to Flash, WMV and (takes @ 1 hour) to MP4.

You have downloaded the OS X version and completed the installation. Now you're ready to begin.

Except ... where's the application?

Sigh. I might as well tell you directly. The OS X version of the ARF Player has no conversion options. All it does is play the ARF file. The executables are installed in your User Library:
/Users/(user name)/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder
There's no Application UI, but if you double click on an ARF file it will play. There's also a shortcut on your desktop

I suppose we should be grateful that they used an OS X installer with a log. I think the uninstall is deleting the Library Folder.

If you want to convert to .MP4 on a Mac, you'll need to run a VM.

Yes, Cisco does suck.

You can, however, play back the ARF file and use Audio Hijack to grab the audio as it plays and save it as an AAC or MP3 file.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been pulling my hair out reading tutorials that claim there are options to export and/or convert ARF files from the Network Recorder and Player. But there are not. Will try the audio hijack.

Anonymous said...

Thanks indeed for the clarification. They claim, everywhere, that you can convert via mac. NOT!

I'll have to find a windows machine to do this job now. sigh!

Anonymous said...

100% correct.

Anonymous said...

I realize this is a very old thread, but I wanted to say say "CSCO does suck indeed".

Anonymous said...

THE WORST!!! It took me 6 months and tons of time and money for them to finally admit conversion is not possible on a mac. Horrible, horrible. Do not waste your time if you want your content, they will own it basically unless you have PC.

Jerry Steele said...

Thanks...I wasn't hoping it wasn't true.

Jerry Steele said...

Thanks. I was hoping there was a way...oh well, I've got a good vm

Unknown said...

use quicktime player on mac to screen copy and audio recording to get the file which u can play on iphone and ipad

JGF said...

Sanjay, are you saying QTP can capture the video stream when ARF is playing?

SaxDaddy said...

FINALLY my question has been answered. WebEx sucks so much that almost 4 years later, you still cannot convert to any other format on OS X. Or at least say that it's not supported on their own stupid website..

Thank you for posting this answer.

wesdog311 said...

I've tried screen capturing with QT and with Screenium. The Network Recording Player will not allow you to capture audio while screen capturing. CISCO sucks!

Anonymous said...

Just a note: The Cisco Removal Tool on their website doesn't even start! It claims I'm running macos 10.4 or earlier (stupid internal test??), so I'm resorting to just blatting the Applications Libraries mentioned here. Oh dear.

Aquarium rider said...

I used WEbex today for the firs time today to record a webinar. As indicated above, I could download the ARF file (Get it? ARF as in "barking dog of a proprietary format") but not convert it.

However...

I also used, at the same time. a $20 screen-recording app called Ink2Go. Allows you to switch your webcam on and off at will, markup your screen with highlighter, pen, shape, and text-box tools if you want. Gave me a nice MP4 file, H.264 and AAC audio, with a total bit rate of 2.41 Mbps. 16 GB of RAM in my 2014 MacBook Pro probably helps, but it's doable. No editing in the app, but you can drop the MP4 right into a Camtasia timeline, or use it in your video editor of choice.

I"ll do it this way again, for sure. Not affiliated with the company in any way. I am a satisfied customer who does a lot of training in higher education.

Dale Fletcher said...

Gordon, above you mention -"If you want to convert to .MP4 on a Mac, you'll need to run a VM"

What do you mean by VM?

Thanks in advance!