nbrplay-vagrant

nbrplay-vagrant uses Vagrant and VirtualBox to convert .arf files into .mp4 files. It works by running a Windows VM with the Webex Network Recording Player (nbrplay) installed, so it should work on all OSs. I have tested on macOS High Sierra. The batch conversion is done by ARF-Converter.

The idea was taken from nbr2mp4-vagrant. nbr2mp4-vagrant only supports .mp3 and not .mp4. It uses the nbr2mp4 and nbr2mp3 Linux tools created by Cisco that are no longer supported. The only supported converter is on Windows. nbr2mp4-vagrant is still a useful tool if you only want mp3s.

The download for nbr2mp4 is still available in some countries. However, I have tested it on an Ubuntu 9.04 machine, and only nbr2mp3 works, not nbr2mp4. I chose Ubuntu 9.04 because it is part of their system requirements. I think the format of .arf has changed so nbr2mp4 can no longer handle them. This is the reason why I created nbrplay-vagrant.

Installation

In order for nbrplay to convert .arf to .mp4, it needs a one time setup to download a plugin. You might have seen this if you have used nbrplay, opened an .arf, and selected "File > Convert Format > MP4 (MPEG-4)". It asks for credentials to Webex to download some files.

I monitored the changes to the nbrplay directory and determined that it needed a DLL called libfaac.dll. I know that FAAC is an open source project and libfaac.dll is available online, but I have tried libfaac.dll v1.29.9.2 32-bit and 64-bit and they both don't work.

The open source libfaac.dll is also smaller in size compared to the nbrplay one. nbrplay libfaac.dll is 440KB and has a sha256 hash of f2693ceacc09231a3843b4bde53963190ef4b211a650f21fb66e0c75511da82e. I think it might be proprietary so I won't be distributing it. You will need to grab it yourself after setting it up through the GUI at C:\ProgramData\WebEx\WebEx\500\plugin\libfaac.dll.

Steps:

1. Install VirtualBox.
2. Install Vagrant.
3. Clone this repository.
4. If you have libfaac.dll, place it in the root of this repo. It will be placed in the nbrplay directory in step 5. If not, you can skip this step but need to set it up in step 6. through the VirtualBox GUI.
5. Run vagrant up --provision-with bootstrap. This starts up the VM and installs necessary files and programs. If you provided libfaac.dll, the bootstrap script will copy libfaac.dll into the nbrplay directory.
6. Skip this step if you already have libfaac.dll. Open up VirtualBox and run the nbrplay-vagrant VM. Run nbrplay open an .arf, and select "File > Convert Format > MP4 (MPEG-4)". Type in your credentials. You can now close the VM, but if you shut it down, you need to run vagrant up --no-provision to start up the VM again. No need to bootstrap anymore unless you want to update the bootstrapped programs. At this point, you can go grab the nbrplay libfaac.dll for easy installation on other machines (no need for GUI).

Usage

1. Start the VM with vagrant up --no-provision if you haven't already.
2. Put your .arf files in the input directory.
3. Run vagrant provision. When the conversion completes, your files will be in the output directory. Running again will overwrite your output/*.mp4 files. There is no progress bar because ARF-Converter doesn't provide one, so test out a small .arf first. I have tested with two files - 1.2MB and 37MB. It takes a while because nbrplay is slow. Make sure your computer doesn't go to sleep and just let it run in the background.
4. When you are done, turn off the VM with vagrant halt.

Note: A shortcut is to just use vagrant up and vagrant halt since vagrant up provisions by default.

Upgrade

If you want to upgrade the programs used by nbrplay-vagrant, you can just bootstrap again with vagrant up --provision-with bootstrap or vagrant provision --provision-with bootstrap if the VM is already up.