Interrupted WinDV Capture...Now I can't play the AVI file.

[ione]

I was capturing a segment on cable using WinDV via firewire (I need it for a project I am working on). But just as I was about to finish and hit the cancel button, my PC shutdown due to a power interruption. Upon restart, the captured AVI filename appears with this symbol (~) which I only see during capture, not after... I tried to play this file but Windows Media Player just gives me a loud screeching audio with no video. I did a little search and found this program called HxD to check if there were any data left to recover--- (from this thread http://forum.videohelp.com/topic351514.html ---the first 200 lines just give me several 00's... but the rest are different characters and mixture of letters and numbers. I am hoping against hope that I can still recover this file. Any luck? Your help will be greatly appreciated.[/url]

[debest]

I was the one in difficulty on the linked thread.

Unfortunately, I never reached a conclusion to this issue. The whole issue of manipulating the headers in the file was complete greek to me, I was thrashing about blindly. I could not find any resources that would help me to figure out how the headers were *supposed* to be written.

Following my last post to the linked thread, I found an article somewhere (can't find the link now) that said something to the effect that I should replace the first chunk of data in the corrupted file with the "correct" chunk from a good file. The catch was that the good file needed to be at least as long in length as the corrupted file. Well, my piece of merde Canon camera is now refusing to record any movie clips longer than a minute or so before succumbing to the "E18" error message, so I cannot generate such a file.

Don't know if any of that helps you, or not. I'd hope for replies from people who actually know what they're doing!

[JohnnyMalaria]

We have a little free utility that can fix corrupt/headerless DV AVI files (Type 1 and Type 2):

Enosoft AVI Repair Tool

John

[ione]

Thank you for your replies, debest and Johnny. It seems debest and I are in the same boat. The repair tools aren't helping for reason that they do not recognize the AVI file as an AVI. Although I am certain that the data are there, but yeah, I'm thinking along the lines of some code missing to seal the premature file. I'll try to experiment a little bit (like you did, debest), and see what comes up. hope that some miracle happens. good luck to you.

[JohnnyMalaria]

That's strange - the tool doesn't care if the file appears to be an AVI or not. It just starts scanning through the file until it finds some magic numbers that identify DV frames.

Does anything happen and/or do you get any messages? What are the exact steps you take?

[ione]

I took screencaptures of what it looks like.

the ione1 file is the file i am trying to recover. the filename has this symbol (~) which i only see during capture (when capture isn't done yet).



if I load ione1 onto Enosoft, it doesn't allow me to press start: am i missing something?

[JohnnyMalaria]

if I load ione1 onto Enosoft, it doesn't allow me to press start: am i missing something?

Yes - you have to specify an output file. The tool creates a new file from the DV frames within the source file (patching the existing file would require a complex process - I tried to develop it that way but it was very painful).

You can choose to create a Type-1 or Type-2 output file.

[ione]

Sorry it took me a long while to respond. I finally tried this tool that John recommended and it worked. Many thanks to all of you and to this great site.

[JohnnyMalaria]

We have a little free utility that can fix corrupt/headerless DV AVI files (Type 1 and Type 2):

Enosoft AVI Repair Tool

John

An update is available to this that fixes two issues (the link is the same):

1) Files >4GB yielded jibberish after the first 4GB
2) The last frame from the corrupt file was omitted

Note, if you have a corrupt DV AVI file (missing header) and need to quickly view it, WMP will open it (once the repair tool is installed) and allow you to play (but not scrub/seek) the file. This means you don't have to repair it just to see what it contains.

This updated version (1.1) will be bundled with the next release of the DV processor. If you have the latter software but need the updated repair tool, you can install the standalone version.

[ione]

Thank you for the update, Johnny. Really appreciate it.

[alexluc]

I have an avi corrupted also not opening. I created it by msn recorder that terminated unexpectedly. I've used the program, but not resolved. the file is 400 megs. Can someone help me?

[JohnnyMalaria]

The repair tool is specifically designed for corrupt DV AVI files. It won't work with other formats.