Playing/Fixing a Damaged AVI Video?

[Gildor57]

I am trying to play an apparently damaged avi. In VLC, the video plays for about 25 seconds and shuts down. In GOM, its about 10 seconds. Zoom Player just crashes.

I cannot get it to load in VirtualDub. I get the following warnings, and it doesn't load (even though the file name is displayed in the window title bar):

[!] AVI: Index not found or damaged -- reconstructing via file scan.

[!] AVI: Keyframe flag reconstruction was not specified in open options and
the video stream is not a known keyframe-only type. Seeking in the video
stream may be extremely slow.

It will load into Gspot, but will not render in the Proposed Codec Solutions and Tests window.
Step 1 (under GSpot Vid) proceeds OK without errors, but step 2 gives a:

"failed to connect Output pin" error for the DivX and XVid steps (sorry, gspot does not allow me to copy and paste the text)

At this point I don't what else I can do.
Any ideas to extract the video (it doesn't have to be avi) or otherwise play the file?

Thanks!

[redwudz]

[!] AVI: Keyframe flag reconstruction was not specified in open options and
the video stream is not a known keyframe-only type. Seeking in the video
stream may be extremely slow.

When you open the file in VD, look to the bottom left of the open window and you should see a check box for 'extended options'. Click that, and select your video and a new menu will come up for re-indexing the file.

But many times a corrupted AVI isn't salvageable.

[Ai Haibara]

You can also try DivFix (I'm not sure about DivFix++, never tried it), for attempting to rebuild the index. I'm not sure how much it'll help in this situation, though.

For GSpot, you can always post a screenshot. Blank out the file and pathnames, if you prefer.

[Krispy Kritter]

VLC is pretty reliable, even for damaged files. Typically, if it won't play in VLC it isn't salvageable.

[Gildor57]

Thanks for the replies. I can post a GSpot screenshot if you think that will help and I'll try the re-indexing in VD. At this point though, I fear it may be too far gone...

[Gildor57]

OK, VD just crashes trying the re-index options. <sigh> Guess I am SOL on this file...