Corrupted Videos

[cuss]

Hello all, about a year ago 50% of my videos stored on my pc become corrupted and unable to play with a message coming back as "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file." Have tried 3 types of video player without success. Also tried the repairs offered on VLC etc . The file shows as having the correct megabite amount ...can anyone help? possibly after a windows up date and are MP4 and WMV files. Cheers

[mtv]

Are your display card/onboard drivers up to date?

[Bigfella237]

First post... Welcome to the forum!

I'm using VLC MP with the K-Lite Codec pack and I rarely find a video that it won't play, well, files that aren't damaged anyway.

See here: (also see "Other downloads" on that page)

Assuming, of course, that the files weren't actually corrupted by something windows did, but I doubt that would be the case.

Failing that, you could try opening the file in a video editing program, they are usually much more forgiving than a straight-out player.

If that works (and the player still does not) you have several options: You could try re-muxing the files with something like MKVtoolnix, or if all else fails, you could re-encode the file using a more common codec.

[cuss]

Yes all the latest...Cheers

[wotnot]

Assuming, of course, that the files weren't actually corrupted

LOL..... that's like saying "assuming, of course, that all politicians weren't actually corrupted"..... B)

OP's obviously had a few swings at this without success ; VLC is usually pretty good with codec support...especially with OP citing .mp4/.wmv containers.

I would be verifying the files are OK first, before ending up chasing one's tail for nothing....ie; if they are corrupt, you'll waste a lot of time achieving nothing =)

That'd be as easy as copying one of the affected files to a USB flashdrive, and having someone else try playing the file of a different computer ~ if it won't play on any other computer, good chance the file is gurged.

You could also upload an affected video file to a free file repository, and provide a link so others online can download and check the file themselves.

Alternately you could burn a linux live distro to a USB flashdrive, and boot that up on your computer, and see if that OS can play the files ~ if it won't, good chance the file is gurged. (and you'll get more meaningful error messages)

The file shows as having the correct megabite amount

Means nothing ... both a corrupt and good video file can have the exact same filesize.

[cuss]

My IT skills are very basic so the meaning of gurged is that its not worth perusing? or try sending a file to an IT genius for a look?

[wotnot]

My IT skills are very basic so the meaning of gurged is that its not worth perusing? or try sending a file to an IT genius for a look?

Ahh..... 'gurged' means 'to swallow up' ...as in "the hard-drive ate my file" ...'computer corrupted the file'.... =)

Plenty of smart folks on this forum....and we'll just try to help you (not take your money)...so if you can, do this ;


1. find the smallest video file you can that's corrupted on your computer

2. upload the file to here -->>

3. Once the upload is complete, you'll get a URL link to the file you uploaded

4. Copy/paste that URL link back to this thread in reply


Then others here (including myself) can download the file and examine what's going on.

[cuss]

Thank you so much for your help, i have uploaded 2 files to look at to Mediafire, one mp4 and one wmv




Appreciate any help! Have also tried running with windows movie maker...no good!

[lsemmens]

Hi Cuss, welcome to the nut house. I downloaded the Mt Yasur file and could not play it in either celluloid or VLC, - I am running Linux, so it is not a windows issue, I'd suggest that the files are Borked! As someone further upthread has suggested and video editor MIGHT work to recover the files. Handbrake is one such that seems to work with all sorts of "corrupt" (i.e. copy protected) files, so that might be worth a look. I've no experience with it, so cannot offer anything more on that front.

[cuss]

Thanks L Semmens will await other replys then try a few thingz.

[wotnot]

Unfortunately the only help we can offer you here, is a final answer to your quandary --- the files you uploaded are corrupted beyond recovery (both of them).

Actually...corrupted is perhaps the wrong word ~ the files are 'empty' ....that is to say you uploaded 2 files full of zeros...hmmm....image from my hex editor...




Both files are zeros, start to finish. VLC presents this error as;

[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x7f5370c40ac0] moov atom not found
[00007f5370008e50] avformat demux error: Could not open /home/gcb/Downloads/Tiger Shrimp Molting.mp4: Unknown error 1094995529

The 'moov atom' data defines such things as the timescale, duration, and display characteristics of the movie, as well as sub-atoms containing information for each track in the movie.

As the files contain all zeros and there is no video data whatsoever, you cannot rebuild/repair these video files -- end of story.

I've seen this before with windows, usually a FAT32 error... but I don't use windows specifically for reasons like this (no partition 'lost&found' directory to store filesystem error fragments)

Still, thanks for taking the time to upload the files ... now you know what's going on =)

[mtv]

That explains why I couldn't see any data in the files.

It's like they have been written over, like when you securely delete files.

If these files used to work (which we assume they did) then something nasty has happened to them, if you did not intend for this to occur.

Are there other files in addition to video files that have been affected?

[wotnot]

possibly after a windows up date

When the OP posted that, I feared the worst ...like I say, seen it before (would've been back @ win10 17xx/18xx)

At the time, I just thought I was looking at a 'corner case' that manifest itself on the particular low-spec hardware I was working with (intel atom SoC is cheap laptop, 4GB ram & 32GB EMMC)

The ultimate cause was during the update process, machine would run out of drivespace, so windows would relocate files (to ram or swapfile), and somehow during this process the file table (& size) are reserved on disk, and are supposed to be overwritten with the relocated data subsequently pending completion of update tasks. Something like that...and of course, the last process doesn't happen because of a reboot (update process, user intervention sick & tired of watching a computer seemingly become unresponsive for hours =), and the wheels fall off....it used to screwup the registry as well (not record values into registry using a recovery drive image) ...piss poor stuff from any OS perspective, but like I say, I mostly blamed it all on the low-spec hardware, which win10 'out grew' about 3years after the laptops were released.

You can make files such as these in *nix using the dd command...ie; dd if=/dev/zero of=full-of-zeros.mp4 count=1 bs=1M s=187M ...will result in the same thing the OP uploaded -- a file full of zeros with a .mp4 extension.

Are there other files in addition to video files that have been affected?

Good question....

[Bigfella237]

So... would this only affect files on the system partition?

IOW, is it a bad idea to use a windoze system partition to store anything but system files?

[wotnot]

So... would this only affect files on the system partition?

IOW, is it a bad idea to use a windoze system partition to store anything but system files?

Quintessentially, those age old words apply -- back up the data you never want to lose.

While you have any data/files that you don't want to lose, sitting on any active device connected to any OS environment, your data/files are at risk of corruption/deletion/loss, because hardware fails.... including electricity supply.



That's a 4TB drive of mine from 4-5years ago -- lightning strike on a tree beside the house we were living in.

Did I lose any data?...no....all my 'precious' data/files are on archival harddrives kept in a steel toolbox (I plug a drive in every 3-6months to backup what's accrued in my $homedir)

Entertaining your notion...still gives the electrical/hardware/OS gremlins access to cause damage to your data/files ...this then just becomes Murphy's Law -- if something can go wrong, it will.

Non spinning harddrives sitting in steel boxes seldom go wrong, just because there's less chance of something going wrong 8)

[cuss]

Thanks you to all who took the time to follow thru with this issue, looks like i have lost a few. Luckily it was only a small portion of my videos and the rest are backed up to a NAS. These ones i missed and only some where corrupted...sadly will probably not know what went wrong. Thanks all again!

[lsemmens]

Sorry we couldn't be more "helpful", cuss, hang around you might be able to help others and learn a few things too. Just watch out for wotnot, he's a good bloke!