Avi chunk viewer?- what is this?!

vanjo · Member Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Location: Macedonia

I suppose you have already heard about this

I tried to play some of my avi DivX files that I ussually watch in Windows Media Player and suddenly I get a message from some strange program that I HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE "Avi Chunk viewer" :
"This AVI file was not prepared for sequential reading, the alternative 'AVI Splitter' will now let the default one handle it. The complete reinterleaving of this file is strongly recommended before burning it onto a slow media like cd-rom"

Can someone tell me please where the hell this software (SPYWARE?!) came from? I dont want it and I didnt installed it (AT LEAST not by my free will)! I suppose it installed itself with some other programs (I dont know where it may came from, last programs that i remember that I installed are: Pegasus MJPEG encoder, Main Concept MPEG encoder and maybe 1-2 other)
Previously all those files could be played without any problems at all until this thing started to annoy me.

I tried to Google on this problem, I can't find any detailed and clear information where this thing comes from, is it an adware, does it do any damage etc. I only found some opinions that this program was sort of useful (?!) cause it helps playing corrupted files (then how come I could play all those files until recently without absolutely NO problem)

Thank you very much in advance for every detailed info how to get rid of this

I found a screenshot too :

Soopafresh · Craptastic Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Yes, I've seen that message. It is normal, it isn't spyware. You're being warned that your Divx file isn't indexed properly. Download this little script and run the Lossless_Gain.bat file on your AVI. It won't touch the original file. The batch file will re-index your AVI and it should work smoothly.

http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=314909

vanjo · Member Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Location: Macedonia

thank u for ur quick reply, but how come i've never seen this avi chunk viewer before? As I pointed out I have watched these same video files with Windows Media Player, Winamp etc. milions of times before with absolutely NO PROBLEMS...until today. They are not corrupted in any way, I have watched them on my computer, in dvd player etc.
I dont want it. I would like to know does it change/damage my files in any way, how can i get rid of it and how I got it, with what program?

Thank you, I would aprecciate any further info

Soopafresh · Craptastic Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Something changed.... You can search for files that have been copied to your system in the past few days, but the indexing issue happens every once in a while. Hey, here's a simpler batch file for you to try.

Make sure your AVI has NO spaces in it

Bad: This Is My.AVI
Good: This_Is_My.AVI

copy AVI into same folder as Reindex.bat and double click Reindex to run. New files will be named
Indexed-original_file_name.avi

http://www.bestsharing.com/files/QV1RgiZ225292/Reindex.zip.html

As far as WHY this happened... So many possibilities. Usually minor errors. When you can, run Chkdsk on your hard drive.

vanjo · Member Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Location: Macedonia

Soopafresh, thank you very much for trying but unfortunatelly its obvious that we dont understand each other.

I dont want any scripts, i dont want no "reindex.bat", i dont want to do anything with my files, there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. I've watched them humndreds of times with absolutely no problems until YESTERDAY (straight from hdd or burned on cd/dvd in a dvd player, everything was fine). even if something did happen meanwhile with the hdd which corrupted my files as you would suggest please have in mind that I never wanted to install this "Avi Chunk Viewer" program so i have right to call it "Adware" or "Spyware" and an "unwanted present" (probably came with some other program). I DONT WANT IT, I HATE IT, even if its helpful (which i doubt)

I want to get rid of it, I have every right to know how it came here (not to install it again by mystake) and most important of all did this program process my files in any way or it just analyzes them to find "errors"?!

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Have you installed any programs recently? Updated any software? Any audio/video program may have installed a different AVI splitter or codecs that caused this. Media Player Classic maybe?

Soopafresh · Craptastic Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

vanjo, my pleasure for the Reindexer.

Very, VERY difficult to find the problem unless you run a program that monitors a system for changes. It is too late to do that now.

You can run WhatChanged http://www.portablefreeware.com/?q=whatchanged&m=Search
Then, the next time you have such a problem, run Whatchanged again to see the changes to your system since the first time you ran WhatChanged.

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Maybe you installed this with some codec pack or media player:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Avi_Splitter.htm

Use something like FilMerit or Radlight FilterManager to remove it. Don't remove the one that's par of Quartz.dll.

http://paul.glagla.free.fr/filmerit_en.htm

vanjo · Member Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Location: Macedonia

seems that I got rid of it! (at least i hope i did and I also hope there will be no consequences or damage from it)
i just uninstalled Avi2DVD (which i have installed recently along with other programs), I tried to play those same files with Windows Media Player and that annoying "Avi Chunk Viewer" is gone.
The files play well, no errors or anything, just like they did in the past. I also checked the properties of those files and there are no recent modifications reported (I still worry a bit, dunno why)

After the uninstall, i still have AVI2DVD folder with some subfolders:
Avi2Dvd\Programs\Filters\Haali media splitter

Inside it there are two dll's. I hope I can delete this manualy without further problems, I'll try.

Just to add that I did the unistall in Safe Mode (dunno if it makes any difference)

Hope this solved the problem for good. If not, I'll post here again.

bacardi/avt · Member Joined: 30 Mar 2001 Location: Sweden

I do not know if my problem is related but here goes:

Today, a few weeks after I got rid of this avichunk viewer, I got into problems when opening a folder with avis in it. Explorer just crashed all the time saying a file called "mpeg2dmx.ax" was causing it. I Found that this was related to WinAvi software by ZJMEDIA ( http://www.winavi.com/en/index.htm ) and I suspect that this was also the software that installed avichunk viewer. I then just resolved the issue by renaming the file "mpeg2dmx.old" and now it looks like it is working, no more crashes.

Squirrel1971 · Member Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Location: United States

I found what appears to be a fix to get rid of that annoying AVI Chunk Viewer, which appears to come up with certian AVI files when you have the "AVI Splitter" installed. For me, it was installed with the K-Lite codec pack, and can be disabled without uninstalling K-Lite, just use their "Codec Tweak Tool" located under your Start menu's
K-Lite Codec Pack\Configuration\ folder. Scroll down until you see AVI Splitter under 'disable...' section, and check it off (be sure to uncheck the rest that automatically get toggled on when you click AVI Splitter), and that seems to have done it for me (although i have only tested a few files, but they used to make the AVI Chunk Viewer window appear, and no longer do).

Hope this helps.

demianqro · Member Joined: 05 Jan 2009 Location: Mexico

Thanks to the one who answered for this tip and for the one who gave the Codec Twek Tool tip. It did work for me just fine.
Thanks to other contributions too, audio normalizer and other scripts you talk about turned very usefull too, didn't know they existed.

Cheers. See you arround.

therock003 · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Location: Greece

Guys i dont think this is an avichunkviewer issue. As said above it's a warning that somethings not right with the file

I tried playing an avi on a standalone player and it just wouldnt play, then when i tried the PC i got this screen the OP posted but evidently it run. What that means though i do not know.

What does it really mean for a file not to be indexed correctly?

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Multiplexing and indexing are two different issues. The OP's problem is a multiplexing problem.

Normally an AVI file has the video and audio streams in small chunks interspersed (multiplexed) within the file. Typically you'll have one frame worth of video followed by the audio that's associated with that frame. Or a few frames of video and the audio associated with those frames. But because of the flexibility of the file format it's possible for the video and audio chunks not to be next to each other. In a bad case scenario the video could be at the start of the file then all the audio at the end.

The error message in the OP's post is indicating that the video and audio chunks are not always right next to each other. That means the player has to seek back and forth within the file as it plays in order to keep the audio and video in sync. That's usually not a problem when playing off a hard drive because hard drives can seek very quickly. But off slow seeking devices like CD or DVD drives (where seek times can be over a second) it is catastrophic -- playback will get very jerky as the drive seeks back and forth between two sections of the file.

Indexing in AVI files refers to a list of key frames that is usually located at the end of the file. Having a list of keyframes makes it easy for a player to seek to arbitrary locations within the video. Without the keyframe index a player hast read through all the frames in the file to seek to a new location. With the index the player can quickly move to the keyframe just before the desired seek time.

therock003 · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Location: Greece

Are you sure this is a multiplexing and not an indexing prolem? Cause from where i play these files it freezes right after it displays "loading indices" ( i use my ps2 to play avis)

Also i wonder if such files have always been this way, or if something happened and modified them to become this way like soopafreh mentioned.

For me it seems that they were like that from the beginning.

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Since I haven't seen your files I can't tell you what's wrong with them.

Open your files in VirtualDub. If there is no index, or the index is badly corrupted, VirtualDub will tell you. It used to be quite common for files downloaded via file sharing applications to have a little bit of the end missing (if I recall correctly, some versions of Napster had a bug that caused this) -- and hence the keyframe index missing or corrupt.

Multiplexing problems don't occur unless the file was created that way or it was remultiplexed improperly at some point. It doesn't just happen to a file sitting on your hard drive or during a file transfer/download.

therock003 · Member Joined: 13 Jul 2006 Location: Greece

Ok understandable. Although audio and video will be 100% the same something inside this file will change though, so a crc checksum process will not yield the same file as the original am i correct?

And most importantly, how can the diagram above be exlained? Why is there a change of direction on the stream 1 (which i guess must be the audio right)?

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Yes, rearranging (remultiplexing) the data within a file would cause a CRC change.

The graph in the first post is of chunk location (within the file) vs. time (at which the chunk is to be played).

The horizontal axis represents the time at which a chunk is to be played. Let's assume it's a 1 hour long video. If the chunk is at the far left of the graph it is to be played at 0 minutes. If it is in the middle (horizontally) it should be played at 30 minutes. If it's at the far right it should be played at 60 minutes.

The vertical axis indicates the location within the file. A chunk at the bottom of the graph is at the start of the file. A chunk at the top of the graph is at the end of the file.

So the graph is telling you that stream 0 is complete, it has a full 60 minutes running time but the stream is multiplexed in such a way that it ends about halfway through the file. Stream 1 is also complete. At the start of the the file the corresponding chunks (to be played at the same time) of stream 0 and stream 1 are next to each other. But as time goes on the corresponding chunks get separated within the file. Stream 1 is "bent" because stream 0 has ended halfway through the file. So, beyond the half-way point, chunks of stream 0 are no longer interspersed with stream 1.

I think two videos with different properties (bitrates?) were appended and the program miscalculated where the chunks of the two streams should be. If a video file of 60 frames was multiplexed with one frame of video followed by one frame worth of audio it would look like this (V=video chunk, A=audio chunk, numbers indicate frame numbers, ie, V3 means video frame 3 and A3 means the audio that is to be played at the same time as V3):

V1 A1 V2 A2 V3 A3 V4 A4.... V30 A30... V59 A59 V60 A60

But in the file we are discussing they are packed something like this:

V1 A1 A2 V2 A3 A4 V3 A5 A6.... V30 A59 A60 V31 V32 V33... V59 V60

I happened to stumble across a video with a multiplexing problem yesterday. Here's a graph of that video:

This graph is much easier to understand. In this file all the video chunks (red diagonal line) appeared first. All the audio chunks were tacked on at the end (the blue line at the top of the graph). I was able to fix this file with a simple remux in VirtualDub (File -> Open Video File, Video -> Direct Stream Copy, Audio -> Direct Stream Copy, File -> Save as AVI).

thenzfarmer · Member Joined: 22 Feb 2009 Location: United Kingdom

Well I had this issue as well, the damn thing was popping up while gaming or running other apps.
I started the task manager, clicked on avi-chunk viewer which was currently open and selected "go to process".
I soon found out "google desktop" was causing the hassle.
Uninstalled it and since then never seen again.
Hope this can help.
Cheerio

jkoerner · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2009 Location: United States

AVI Chunk Viewer: A Nightmare from Hell.

It pops up. It says "This AVI file was not prepared for sequential reading, blaah blah blah..."

But it does NOT say **WHICH** AVI file it's talking about!!! Since it is popping up at seemingly random times for all the people posting in this thread, obviously they (like myself) cannot figure out WHAT is triggering the thing to pop up. i.e., I am not opening, playing, editing, etc. any AVI file when the thing pops up out of nowhere.

Also -- this is almost humorous -- under the phrase above ["This AVI file was not prepared ...."],
there is a checkbox for "Do not show this dialog again (hold Shift to re-enable it"
Dialog??? Um, excuse me, but WHAT dialog? A dialog means a two-party interaction, a conversation - but this thing is just a statement, a declarative sentence, not a dialog of any sort.

And -- "hold Shift to re-enable it"?????? Not that anyone in their right mind would wish to re-enable anything about this software, but if one hypothetically wanted to do so, then they should Hold Shift WHEN, exactly??? 24-hours per day, 7 days per week? Just moments before the thing pops up onto the screen (you have to be clairvoyant, of course, to do that one).

AVI Chunk Viewer also gives no indication of where the hell it came from, what application it's a part of , or any other clue about what the hell it is. No help, no nothing.

In other words, this is about THE stupidest piece of software I have seen in over 30 years of experience! Incredible!

--
I don't understand how previous poster could figure that Google Desktop was the culprit responsible for triggering the popups.

When I right click on the thing in Task Manager and tell it to Go To Process, it goes to rundll32.exe (not googledesktop.exe). So, this again gives us no clue as to where the thing is coming from.

I have searched through the Registry for "AVI Chunk Viewer" -- not there.
I have searched for the string "AVI Chunk Viewer" contained WITHIN any file in c:\Program Files -- not there.
Where the hell IS this thing???? It is practically a rootkit, in making itself so difficult to find.

I agree with the original poster that this piece of crap IS malware (though probably not by intention of its author) -- it gets installed on user's computer without user's permission, it interrupts user's activity on the computer, at random times, it cannot be turned off or removed. If software could be executed (with a bullet or a noose, I mean), that is what should be done with it.

Does anyone know who's the author of this P.o.S**t???