Where is Workout Blender for Download Users?

[dmerz]

Out of curiousity how much space does this take on your drive?

 

[mandarinfish]

It's video data, so it depends on the time length of the pre-mix you want to make. For me, my favorite pre-mixes that I liked to use over and over from the DVDs were the shorter time saving ones. So, as an example, one of mine is the XTRAIN Bis and Tris, Timesaver Rounds 1-5. It's a little shorter than a half hour, and the video file is about 385MB. It's not compressed by the creation technique I described, so is the same full resolution as the original downloads, but they can certainly be transcoded and recompressed to make them lower resolution and smaller if that needs to be a goal. I don't bother with that, as I only create videos for the pre-mixes that I want to use regularly, so I don't have a lot of space taken by them. I've no need to make all the pre-mixes. I already have all the downloads (as well as the DVDs), and I'm not a streaming subscriber. Sometimes (non-COVID times) I travel to places where the wifi is sketchy or not available, so my preference is to have the videos I want preloaded on my laptop or mobile device. At home, I have a widescreen TV in my studio with an Apple TV device attached (Roku, etc, work as well), and I just use my remote to bring up my library of workout videos and pre-mixes that are stored on my computer and play the one I want. Hope this helps!

 

[imamac]

Hi, I know this is an old thread, but thought I'd post the info so that people can find it if they have the same question. I used the desktop Workout Blender app on my Mac until it stopped working due to an out of date library incompatibility. So I worked out an alternative. I'm using Mac based tools, though there are likely some similar tools on Windows.

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I have been using Handbrake as well to split the downloads by chapter/section. Handbrake is available for Windows as well as Mac. I create Playlists using Plex for the mixes.

Any player that can create Playlists should work. The benefit of Playlists is that the mixes don't take up extra space since they are combined "on-the-fly".

How to split a movie into many movie files, split by chapters?

I'm trying to take a movie that I need to analyze for an essay and split it into 18 movie files, one for each chapter (as defined by pre-existing chapter markers), for ease of watching one scene at a

apple.stackexchange.com

 

[Amy Steppe]

I am still waiting to receive my digital downloads. Everytime I write customer service I get no response.

 

[mandarinfish]

I am still waiting to receive my digital downloads. Everytime I write customer service I get no response.

If you didn't get the original email with the downloads codes or links, and you aren't getting responses from customer service, is it possible all these emails are ending up in your spam folder? It's something to check.
When I preorder digital downloads, I get an email with the code to use to go on-site when the workout series is released later, then I go through checkout with the code, and am emailed the download links. If I purchase on the website (vs preorder), I get the download links via email right away. You may want to try calling them to straighten it out.

 

[mandarinfish]

I have been using Handbrake as well to split the downloads by chapter/section. Handbrake is available for Windows as well as Mac. I create Playlists using Plex for the mixes.

Any player that can create Playlists should work. The benefit of Playlists is that the mixes don't take up extra space since they are combined "on-the-fly".

I have looked at various implementations of playlists before to do this, and had always encountered limitations or just frustrations (especially for streaming to Apple TV). We've used Plex before with PlayOn, but that was some time ago. I need to look at it again. I'm subscription averse, so the main things would be getting it to work via streaming from my media server to the Apple TV, and also using the phone/iPad in offline mode with the workout videos, without needing the subscription. I'll definitely check it out.

 

[Camilapalmeida]

Hi, I know this is an old thread, but thought I'd post the info so that people can find it if they have the same question. I used the desktop Workout Blender app on my Mac until it stopped working due to an out of date library incompatibility. So I worked out an alternative. I'm using Mac based tools, though there are likely some similar tools on Windows.

You need to know which chapters are used for any particular premix that you want to build from your downloads. They are vaguely listed by category in the PDF user guides that can be downloaded. But I like to use the Workout Manager because they have the specific chapter numbers and names. So go to Workout Manager on Cathe's website. Click on the Calendar in the top bar and then select "Add Workout" on the right. Select "DVD", then the DVD name, then the Premix. The Premix chapters will show on the right side, listing the chapter number and name.

I use the free Handbrake tool to save chapters (individual or a sequence) from the digital download video file and save them to files. This will result in a number of separate video files. To combine them for the premix, I use another tool called MP4tools; you need to click on the "Edit Files" button, then select to open the first video file that corresponds to the first chapter(s) you want to include in the premix. Then you use "Add File" to add the subsequent files/chapters. Once you have added all the files for the premix, you can click "Join" to create the combined output file. And you have your premix video.

If you want the premix video to have chapter information, there are further steps that can be taken using other tools like Subler (again, for Mac). If there is interest in that, I can go over that.

Hi! Thanks for sharing the details on how you create your own premixes out of downloaded videos. I am interested on learning how you create premixes with chapter information. You mentioned you use Subler, but I never used this app before and would appreciate any guidance you can provide.
Thank you so much!

 

[mandarinfish]

Hi! Thanks for sharing the details on how you create your own premixes out of downloaded videos. I am interested on learning how you create premixes with chapter information. You mentioned you use Subler, but I never used this app before and would appreciate any guidance you can provide.
Thank you so much!

Hi, sorry I didn't see this til now! You may likely have already figured out how to do this, but here is the process.

It's a bit fussy to do the chapters, but I like having them, so it's worth it to me...

- Bring up each separate video file (the ones saved using Handbrake), select the chapter track and export the chapter files, for each video file. Also, Handbrake doesn't preserve the chapter info, if the video contains only one chapter, so for those, I needed to enter the chapter name manually in Subler before exporting a chapter file.

There's some good info here (hope this link doesn't get removed when this posts): https://www.robpeck.com/2012/07/merging-m4v-files-on-a-mac-with-chapters

- At the link above, there's a script ("chaptermerge") that the author wrote to merge chapter files. This is what I use to combine the separate chapter files into a single file.
- Then, bring up the joined video premix file (that was created using MP4tools in the steps I outlined before) in Subler, and drag the merged chapter file (that was created using the chaptermerge script) onto the main track window.
- Make sure the chapter track is selected (for saving to output) and save the file.

Hope that helps.