Cannot play video file

[brianstoiber]

I was using a program called CamStudio (http://camstudio.org) to capture the screen of a computer. Once I finished, I tried opening the video on both my Mac, and my PC (where the video was captured) and I cannot get it to open. The file is saved as an .avi. When I try to open it when the different programs below these are the error messages I get.

On my PC:
Windows Media Player: 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.

Media Player Classic: Cannot render the file.

Quicktime: Error - 1856: an unknown error occurred (drywall.avi)

Nero ShowTime: Cannot play this media file. The file is either corrupt or the application does not support the format you are trying to play.

Sorenson Squeeze: Unable to add the source file(s). The following file(s) are not supported.

On my Mac:
Quicktime: The movie could not be opened. The file is not a movie file.

I have uploaded the video to my work server. I was wondering if someone could download it and see what is wrong with it. The file is only 48mb so it wouldn't take too long to download. I really don't think it is a codec problem because I have done these before and have not had any problems. If there is some way to fix it I would be forever in debt.

www.laserproductsus.com/dlfiles/drywall.avi

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

[poisondeathray]

You need a decoder. A free one is ffdshow, just enable camstudio in the configuration. This should work for direct show player (e.g. mpc, wmp11)

Cheers

[brianstoiber]

Thank you for that suggestion but it didn't work. I installed it, rebooted my computer and still getting the same errors.

[poisondeathray]

Your file is corrupted or damaged. There is no header information. Gspot and mediainfo show it's blank. Not even VLC, Mplayer, KMplayer could play it - and vlc can usually play bits of damaged files.

It is not a regular camstudio file. Perhaps you corrupted it during transfer or recorded it incorrectly?

[brianstoiber]

so does that pretty much mean that there is nothing I can do to recover the file? I deal a lot more with graphic design and I can usually open files that are somewhat corrupted and get a little out of them. I am guessing it is not the same for this. right? lol

[poisondeathray]

You can sometimes do a raw dump and recover some frames if it's only slightly damaged. It doesn't seem to work with your sample. I tried repackaging with ffmpeg, mp4box, mencoder/mplayer, tsmuxer, mkvmerge - no luck. I tried several source filters in graphstudio - nothing will detect it properly. There is data there (you can see it with a hex editor), but nothing can decode it properly.

[Leonel Dolara]

Seems the file is corrupted, and I don't think you will be able to recover single parts. Is it too much work? If it doesn't try to do it with another program, I use Adobe Captivate or Wink.
Best wishes

[brianstoiber]

ok, I guess what I am going to do is just take the video I did on a previous shoot and either insert screen shots and insert them into the video that this was going to be a lower 3rd for.

First let me explain. My company produces a digital templator for countertops. Granite and marble fabricators take our laser templator onto job sites. They can take digital measurements of the jobsite/cabinet bases and create CAD ready template. So for this project, I shot the video of a templator shooting the template and then I was going to overlay the actual video screen captures of what the happens on the computer while it is being used. So what I will just have to do is use an older video file and change the speed of the video throughout the entire clip so that it matches what the templator was doing in real life. I know a little confusing. If you care to see what I am talking about, you can see the previous video (http://www.laserproductsus.com/video/LT55XL/lt55xltemplating.asp) that we had to get an idea of what I am talking about. If you wait until 45 seconds in you will get a clear picture of what I am doing (only trying to make it look so much nicer with crisp and clean screen captures and not an extra video feed that records the screen from above. If not, thanks for all your collective help. I really appreciate you guys trying.

[poisondeathray]

Can you just re-record the camstudio segment? It's just showing the events on the PC, correct? I would try it out on a 5sec clip first to figure out if you are doing it correctly (so you don't waste time). Then you want to insert that in a picture-in-picture type overlay ?

[brianstoiber]

Can you just re-record the camstudio segment? It's just showing the events on the PC, correct? I would try it out on a 5sec clip first to figure out if you are doing it correctly (so you don't waste time). Then you want to insert that in a picture-in-picture type overlay ?

Unfortunately I cannot do that because what is happening on the screen is affected by the the laser w produce is measuring on jobsites. The problem is that this was done when there was no cabinets in the kitchen our laser was templating. As soon as we finished recording, the cabint installers started putting the cabinets in so now that the jobsite has changed, if we were to shoot the video and record the screen, it would be totally different.

Thanks for the help anyways. I willtry to figure something out so I do not have to use that video capture.

[Seeker47]

My use of Camstudio has been limited, but it seemed to me that it was very easy to mess things up when trying to record something, and getting a good result -- in any way that was readily repeatable -- was far from a sure thing.