Need help with a corrupted HD-PVR recording

[UrbOrb]

hello, i need some help from people who know what they are doing, because i tried everything that i could think of and i'm running out of options. i recorded a 14 hour gameplay session with an HD PVR gaming edition. the M2TS file is 85.3 gb in size, the session went on for roughly 14 hours. but when i try to play/edit the file, it only shows about 100 minutes. at the very beginning of the file, there is the beginning of the session, but at some point there is some kind of mixed playback where you see fragments of different footage showing in rapid succession and where it can't make up its mind on what to play back. then at some point it switches to the last part of the video. the last hour of the session seems to be intact, but the audio is completely out of sync, to the point where i think it must be from some other part of the recording (not just desynced by a few seconds, but probably by minutes or hours, i assume). the file is huge and the data must be there somehow, but i can't access it. i tried: sony vegas, virtualdub, avisynth, various file format changers. all of them only show that the file is ~100 minutes long. when i try to use mediainfo on the file, it freezes. so here is an info on a different file that is not corrupted but that was recorded with the same settings and in the same format:

Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 91.4 MiB
Duration : 1mn 39s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 7 673 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 18.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=4, N=32
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 1mn 39s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 6 906 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 20.0 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 59.940 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.125
Stream size : 82.3 MiB (90%)
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 1mn 39s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -50ms
Stream size : 4.57 MiB (5%)

does anyone have any idea on what could be wrong with the corrupted file, and what i can do? i would greatly appreciate any help. thanks for your time.

[budwzr]

Did you try Hauppage Tech Support?

[UrbOrb]

Did you try Hauppage Tech Support?

hi, yes i did and they never heard about this problem before and they couldn't help me. do you have any other suggestions?

[Baldrick]

You could try demux the video and audio track with tsmuxer. And see if you can play the extracted video stream.

As a last solution can you try video repair software like video repair tool and see if it can find any more video. The trial version will repair half the video.

[Cornucopia]

I'd start with TS Doctor or Treasured (as listed in VH's Video Repair Software tools section). If it's worse than that, you may have to do a little detective work comparing the hex output of good vs. bad files to see if actual video stream payload data is consistently there. If so, get back to us or check out a few of the online video file repair places (who charge $$ by hour or filesize, but won't chg anything if they can tell it won't work). If not, you ought to doublecheck to see whether the file you got wasn't corrupted by the harddrive (where maybe a filesystem check/repair/undelete tool might re-organize your file back to non-corrupt). But it is quite possible that you're just screwed.

Scott

[UrbOrb]

I'd start with TS Doctor or Treasured (as listed in VH's Video Repair Software tools section). If it's worse than that, you may have to do a little detective work comparing the hex output of good vs. bad files to see if actual video stream payload data is consistently there. If so, get back to us or check out a few of the online video file repair places (who charge $$ by hour or filesize, but won't chg anything if they can tell it won't work). If not, you ought to doublecheck to see whether the file you got wasn't corrupted by the harddrive (where maybe a filesystem check/repair/undelete tool might re-organize your file back to non-corrupt). But it is quite possible that you're just screwed.

Scott

hello, thanks for giving me these pointers. trasured is only for mac so i can't use it. i tried ts doctor and get this:
http://imgur.com/ObD8cHC
so at least there is something that was found. i'm currently trying to output to a new file so let's see. what i can already see though is that ts doctor shows "1:38:01" as the new duration. so i'm afraid the new file won't be in full length either.

i didn't know that there are file repair services online. the truth is, i'd be willing to pay if i can get the original footage back. the problem is that i have no means of uploading 86GB of data with my connection (it would literally take me weeks to upload). so i'd have to mail it in on a harddrive. can you recommend a few good repair places that have a good reputation? preferrably one that is in europe? also, how do i compare hex outputs? i don't know what you're talking about. thanks for your time.