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  1. Hi,

    Sorry if this isn't the correct place for my question. Admins feel free to place this thread in the proper place. Also soory for my (sometimes) incorrect english, as my native langauge is Dutch.

    This is my problem:
    I was broadcasting a livestream with OBS(open broadcaster software). After aproxemately an hour windows suddenly changed the colour-scheme, which resulted in a crash of OBS. I have a local recording, but it doesnt play. I was told it was because of a bad header and it could be fixable. I dont know if it is possible, and if so, how to do it.

    I hope you guys can help me.
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  2. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Have you tried open it/remux it with editors/muxers like avidemux, mymp4boxgui and then save as a new mp4? Or does they not recognize the file?

    And last try video repair tool and see if it can repair the file. The trial will just repair half the film.
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  3. Avidemux crashes when i tried to load the broken .mp4. I will try the other solutions you suggested, and post the results.

    Thanks in advance!
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Post a text readout of the MediaInfo view of the file in question, please.

    How were you "told it had a bad header"? An app (OBS?)? Tech support? Forum?

    I guess I don't understand: were you RE-Broadcasting? Because regardless of what went on with Windows (and that should be checked into also), nothing should have happened to your original source file (unless your were streaming your live desktop or similar).

    Scott
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  5. Originally Posted by Baldrick View Post
    Have you tried open it/remux it with editors/muxers like avidemux, mymp4boxgui and then save as a new mp4? Or does they not recognize the file?

    And last try video repair tool and see if it can repair the file. The trial will just repair half the film.
    Tried all suggestions, without results. AviDemux crashes, mymp4boxgui says: file contains no audio, video, subtitle or chapter stream. video repair tool can analyse but no repairs available(window stays blanco)

    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    Post a text readout of the MediaInfo view of the file in question, please.

    How were you "told it had a bad header"? An app (OBS?)? Tech support? Forum?

    I guess I don't understand: were you RE-Broadcasting? Because regardless of what went on with Windows (and that should be checked into also), nothing should have happened to your original source file (unless your were streaming your live desktop or similar).

    Scott


    I don't exactly remember where is was able to read that the header was bad. I think it was VLC or win mediaplayer.

    I will now describe the situation as it happened.

    I drive in a Simracing league, and we try to broadcast every race LIVE. In order to do that, i have to start the game(rFactor2) and join our dedicated server. I use broadcasting software(OBS in this case) to stream directly to our youtube channel, but at the same time to be sure, i also do a local recording(feature of OBS). When i start broadcasting(klick start stream in youtube), I always close all aplications i dont use because rFactor2 and OBS together use 90% of my proc(AMD 8core), 90% of my graphicscard(GTX660) and 50-60% of my memory. Somehow the LiveStream didn't start due to switched accounts(no more rights to start), but I noticed that after 35 minutes of broadcasting. But because I also do a local recording, i kept going. After aproxemately 50 minutes of streaming, windows suddenly changed the aero scheme, which resulted in a crash of OBS. I immediately restarted OBS to capture the last 10 minutes of the race. So the entire broadcast has 2 parts. 1- The first 50 minutes until the crash(bad file), and 2- the last 10 minutes(correct file)

    Hope this makes everything clear. But sadly still no luck in finding a solution....
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  6. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    So the broadcast AND the live stream recording were interrupted (by the crash)?

    And the earlier section is incomplete/unusable, while the later section is fine?

    So, unless you made a change to the parameters (or the app somehow forgot to retain the parameters upon restart), your 2 file segments should have IDENTICAL parameters in the headers, right? (Obviously, not counting the timestamps & duration).

    It ought then to be possible to fix this, but it might take some work.

    What likely happened is that because a live stream DOESN'T know beforehand how long it is going to be, certain parameters which ought to be in the header were kept from being added until the file/stream recording was completed. This would certainly include duration, and probably bitrate, and timestamp (if provided). Possibly other info.
    Now, your crash left that incomplete, fragmented stream in a state where it NEVER had that info put into the header.
    So what you should be seeing in the file (if you looked at it in a hex editor) would be blocks of data that signified the generic container info, then blocks of data that should have been the remainder of the header (both container-wide and A and V stream-wide), which now might be empty, or garbage, or default placeholder info with empty slots, or a combination of all three, possibly alternating. After that section, you would see blocks of data that contained the actual media stream(s) - as recorded - up until the point that it crashed, where you might have a block of partially written data.

    Maybe you see where I'm heading with this:
    If you can isolate the header section that is missing, from the section of media data, and then graft a copy of proper header info from the GOOD file into the bad file - IN PLACE OF - the original header info, and then modify the result to accurately point to the beginning of the real media stream(s), and their spacing, and also calculate and store the duration of the remaining CLEAN portion of recorded media within that file segment, THEN you should be OK.

    You'll need first to make duplicates of your files. You would NEVER want to work directly on a single copy of the file in case something ELSE went wrong.

    Then you'll need to make good use of a hex editor, MediaInfo, and possibly other tools that work well with MP4 containers and their full header set (including QuicktimePro, ffmpeg).

    A mediainfo DETAILED text readout of the GOOD portion would allow us to continue to guide you...

    It's a LOT of work, and nothing is 100% guaranteed, but all is still not lost.

    Scott
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  7. Oh man, not another complicated project... Here is the mediainfo on the second part which plays fine.

    Hope you can point me in the right direction, because i don't have a lot of time to spend on this one.

    Click image for larger version

Name:	text_readout_mediainfo_DTM2.jpg
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  8. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Did you select the working video as reference in video repair tool? It has worked for most of my broken mp4 and files that people have sent me.

    You can also try http://mp4repair.org/pwt6/preview.html (also not free)

    But it doesn't look good.
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  9. Yes i did. Also I tried with 2 earlier files of broadcasts from the previous races.

    I'll give http://mp4repair.org/pwt6/preview.html a shot.
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  10. Hey all. I don't want to hijack the thread, but I'm in the same situation as OP. I have about 5 hours of critical footage that was recorded through OBS. Awkwardly, of the 6 total hours, about 30 minutes of it was saved and works perfectly.

    The video was broken up into 8 parts and of those, 4 work (literally every other recording bugged out. *1.mp4 is okay, *2.mp4 is not, *3 is okay, *4 is not and so on). All the other files are basically trashed. I can do nothing with them and I've tried just about everything that I know how to do -- and some things I don't know how to do! I've tried opening the files in VLC, ffmpeg editing, AtomicParsley, All Video Fixer -- you name it. I generally get a "File not supported" error. I use the grauonline.de Video Repair Tool and got a "moov atom not found" error once. I haven't been able to reproduce that.

    Of note, I did not crash at any point and OBS did not report any errors or anything to indicate the recording was not working anything short of flawlessly.

    Interestingly enough, http://mp4repair.org/pwt6/preview.html does give me a preview of two of the most critical portions of the video with great quality audio but since there is so much footage, I would have to pay 300 dollars to have 5 hours of footage restored and that is way outside my price range. The fact that mp4repair.org does show a really good preview gives me a lot of hope that some of the footage will be salvageable.

    I have resigned myself to the fact that some of the footage is lost for good however.

    I don't know if any of you guys are gurus -- I'm certainly not -- but I would be more than happy to pay 50 dollars (wired through and to Paypal) to anyone who can restore these files even partially.
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