Paul -

I just helped a client do a webinar on GoToWebinar this morning and I have to say that there are definite limitations on a Mac in terms of hosting, AND you cannot record if you are on a Mac.

If this has changed in the last few hours, I would love to know about it.

In terms of the recording, we had one of our presenters who was on a PC record it. It turned out great, so he says, because even though I got the file and the audio is fine, the screen is black when I look at on my iMac.

Your thoughts?

Just noticed that your original post was from September. Would love to know what your experience was for the New Media Mindset Webinar that you did on September 18th.

Ruth

We have some gotwebinar events that we recorded in windows media player format. We have Mac clients who are not able to view these recorded files, they just get audio. GTW’s support just says that it should work.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I’m having the same problem. Black Screen audio only. Whatever codec goto meeting gives you to play on the mac doesn’t work.

This is what continues to make me very angry at GotoWebinar.
It is NOT mac friendly. This is an obvious clear choice on the part of the GoToWebinar people to make the default record settings using their proprietary Windows Media video codec (’G2M3′) that CANNOT be handled by Flip4Mac.

Now apparently it is possible to configure the recording so the video format is Windows Media Video 9 Standard Codec. That can be handled by Flip4Mac. I have some examples of that in the past.

Unfortunately, but predictably, 99% of the time the Mac users subscribing to a webinar done on GoToWebinar are screwed if they want to receive the recording of the webinar, because the presenter doesn’t even realize that the default configuration is anti-Mac.

Once again today, I just downloaded a 500 MB file only to find out the presenter once again used the default settings and thus unintentionally treated all Mac users like myself as second class members who get only to listen to audio with a black screen. I hate GoToWebinar.

I discovered the real (seriously) fix for this after having recorded three days of my company’s workshop and having the same audio/no video problem while editing on a Mac. Unfortunately though the fix for this does require access to a Windows PC (i run it virtualized on my mac).

In the Program Files –> Citrix –> GoToMeeting folder (there may be another folder with numbers, whihc is the version of GTM you have installed) there will be a file called “g2mtranscoder.exe”. This is the utility that GoToMeeting uses to convert the file to a generic WMV file after recording - but of course we all know that nobody changes that setting in GTM before the recording takes place. NO worries, you CAN fix it. Now the directions:

1. copy g2mtranscoder.exe AND g2m.dll files and paste them onto the ROOT C: drive (ie not in a folder).
2. place the gotomeeting recorded file on the root C: drive as well
3. launch the command prompt (start -> run -> cmd)
4. if the command prompt launches and shows a file/folder path (ie C:\Documents and Setting\etc) then type “cd..” (without the quotes) until you are seeing just the root C: in the command prompt line (will look like C:\>)
5. now, type the following at the prompt: “c:\g2mtranscoder.exe source=c:\videofilenamehere”. (of course put the name of your video file instead of those words, and dont forget the .wmv)
6. this should have kicked off the conversion, but there is no visual indication of this. you can make sure its working though - open Task Manager and click on Processes. then sort by CPU usage. you should see the g2mtranscoder hogging all your CPU cycles. its working!

depending on the size of your original file, this process can take overnight. for instance I had three 8 hour recordings to convert and it took me 2 days.

hope this helps!