1. What are ASF files?
2. How to play ASF files on Mac?
3. How to convert ASF to MP4, AVI, MOV, etc. on Mac?
4. Convert DVD and videos to ASF on Mac?

Part 1, What are ASF files?

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.

The format does not specify how (i.e. with which codec) the video or audio should be encoded; it just specifies the structure of the video/audio stream. This is similar to the function performed by the QuickTime, AVI, or Ogg container formats. One of the objectives of ASF was to support playback from digital media servers, HTTP servers, and local storage devices such as hard disk drives.

The most common filetypes contained within an ASF file are Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV). Note that the file extension abbreviations are different from the codecs which have the same name. Files containing only WMA audio can be named using a .WMA extension, and files of audio and video content may have the extension .WMV. Both may use the .ASF extension if desired.

Part 2, How to play ASF files on Mac?

In order to play .ASF files on a Macintosh, it is necessary to download Flip4Mac from the Flip4Mac website. Flip4Mac is the solution which Microsoft recommends for playing files which were formerly playable by Windows Media Player.

The Flip4Mac installer installs a Quicktime plugin which allows Quicktime to play a variety of Windows-formatted files. It will not allow DRM-protected Windows media files to be played.

A third-party solution is VLC. It plays a wide variety of video formats, including VCDs and DVDs.

Another solution is MPlayer, which plays a wide variety of formats. It's still under development and has some rough edges, so at this point VLC is a better choice.

Part 3, How to convert ASF files to MOV, MPEG, MP4 on Mac?

ASF files are notoriously twitchy. They often have index issues and can generate peculiar problems. To solve ASF problems in one swoop, use ASF Converter for Mac to convert ASF to MOV, MP4, MPEG, etc.

1Install and Run ASF Video Converter for Mac

You can download it for free:

• Intel Version

To install it, simply mount the .dmg archive by double-clicking it, and copy the application to your applications folder (or wherever you want it ).

2Load ASF Videos to this conversion app

Drag and drop the ASF files to the program.

3Convert ASF to MP4, MOV, FLV, AVI, etc. on Mac OS X

After you added ASF files, you can select an output format(MP4, MOV, FLV, AVI, etc.) for each video file and specify a directory on your computer to save the output files.

You can also extract audio from ASF to MP3 on Mac with this ASF Converter for Mac.

You can know more here: How to edit, crop, trim video files and capture pictures on Mac OS X?

Note: You can also use this ASF Video Converter to convert all videos such as MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, MTS/M2TS or rip DVDs (including commercial encrypted DVDs) to ASF.