What is an ARF File and How Do I Open It?

If you utilize Cisco’s WebEx conferencing software, you will receive an Advanced Recording Format file (.ARF) when you download your saved WebEx Advanced Recording data. This particular file extension is what you will receive when the recordings are downloaded. One of the coolest features of this offering from our friends at Cisco is that each separate file can contain up to 24 hours of video!

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The files saved contain the video made during the recording, along with a table of contents, the list of people who attended the conference call and much more. If you need to download your recording and are not sure where to find it, head to your My WebEx account. Choose My Files, then My Recordings. Click on More and then Download next to the proper presentation.

When you are ready to play back your conference recording ARF file, you can easily use Cicsco’s WebEx Network Recording Player on both Apple and Windows systems. However, the ARF files will not work with your YouTube, Google Docs or Dropbox accounts. In order to upload the conference to another site to share with others, you are going to need to convert it.

There are two super simple – and free! – options to convert this file. The first is to use the free WebEx Recording Player. Just open up your saved conference in the software. Click on File and then Convert Format and choose your preferred extension, such as an MP4 or WMV file. The other thing you can do is download the free Any Video Converter. This little piece of free software is extremely powerful – and does an excellent job converting many different types of files.

What other types of file extensions are giving you headaches? Need help figuring out what to use to play a certain file or how to convert it to something else? Let us know in the comments and we will do what we can to help!