gspot says "12.5 GB unneeded bytes at end of file"

[sasuweh]

I have several VHS>DV transfers I made using Pinnacle Studio 12. Some of those I have also trimmed the beginning and end and exported back to DV again using Studio 12. As an example, I have a file that is 17.5 GB (82 minutes). When I drop that file into Gspot information appliance, under container it says:

Note: 12.5 GB unneeded bytes at end of file.
DV Type 2 AVI
Multipart OpenDML AVI (5 parts)
(148365 frames in first part, -3 frames follow)

So, what does that mean? That doesn't make any sense. A 17GB file has 12GB of unneeded bytes? Could it be that all these captures I am making are corrupted? Maybe just a header problem? It says this about the original captured dv files and also the trimmed dv files. Almost all the captured files I drop in say large unneeded bytes, varying from a few hundred MB to many GB. There don't appear to be any errors while capturing - 0 dropped frames. Only 1 file says "file length correct - here's what it says about that file (4.82GB, 22 minutes):

File Length Correct

DV Type 2 AVI
Multipart OpenDML AVI (5 parts)
(40941 frames in first part, 0 frames follow)

So should I be concerned? The files seem to play okay, and even convert to DVD fine using CCE and muxman. But now I am worried about this.

[jagabo]

GSpot must be wrong. The size of your video is right for a DV AVI file.

[sasuweh]

Thanks for replying. I thought the file size seemed correct for a DV AVI. Does Gspot commonly have this problem? I Googled the message and found many people getting the same message with their files, but none of those threads seemed to offer any ideas, they usually say the file must be corrupted.

[jagabo]

There could be something wrong in the AVI header that's making GSpot think that. You could try a fast remux with VirtualDub in Direct Stream Copy mode. See if GSpot reports the same problem with the new file.

[sasuweh]

Gspot reports the same type of problem even with remux in VirtualDub. I did find the following information though by the author of Gspot regarding the issue, so it looks like it probably is a Gspot bug after all. I'll post it below for others:



"Just an FYI re the GSpot report it seems to be a bug so I wouldn't worry about it, here's a post from the author on a Doom9 forum.


I think in this case the "19.7GB unneeded bytes at end of file” is a GSpot bug; I may have fixed it already, but have been so busy I haven't yet had a chance to confirm that, nor consolidate various other fixes & updates and post an updated version.

There's are, or at least were, a lot of 32-bit variables used to store file lengths, and they overflow at 4GB. It's not something that comes up a lot (except for DV), so I hadn't really noticed the problem during a lot of early testing, though I have gotten occasional reports about it.

I shouldn't say "I think" - it's definitely wrong. If GSpot's warning message in the screenshot was correct, the usable part of the file is only 25.7GB - 19.7GB = 6GB, which is much too small for a 2hr 2min DV file. That's why it also came up with much too low a bitrate for DV, in about the same proportion.

Without sound, not to mention the redundant sound in a type 2 DV, that file size should be at least (25Mbps x 122 minutes x 60 secs/min) / (8 bits/byte) which is 22GB right there. Add in the two copies of the soundtrack & misc overhead and 25.7GB is probably just about correct.

I'll be changing all file length related variable in GSpot to 64-bit shortly (that's just a programming change - not something that requires a 64-bit O/S, btw). That'll up the limit to 7,179,869,184 gigabytes which is 1,677,216 terabytes which is 16,384 petabytes which is 16 exabytes. That's 8000 times larger than Google's entire storage capacity which. of course, they use to cache the entire Internet, amongst other things.

So that should get rid of that error for a while, anyway"



So I guess I don't have to worry about that then? I have the latest version of Gspot, btw, so I guess it was never fixed.

[jagabo]

Yes, it sounds like a bug in GSpot. I wouldn't worry about it.

[lordsmurf]

Happens with HuffYUV, too. Ignore it.