Can .avi be demuxed, if so how?

[Dunnyman]

I have an .avi file, it's got divx video, and ogg audio, but it won't re-encode the audio under circumstances in ffmpegX, it just gives me screeches, pops and hiss, but the video plays perfectly in VLC!!! I've managed to get a clean video file, but how the heck do I get the audio out of this thing??? I'd love to find the person who thought up the .avi file format and beat them senseless!!! THE MOST problematic files ever!

[TugBoat]

An AVI movie is not muxed, therefore, you can't demux something that isn't muxed. An AVI should have separate Audio and Video tracks. Does anything play the audio? If you have Quicktime Pro you can try extracting the audio track and converting it. I believe there's an OGG plug-in for QT somewhere, have you tried that? If you have that plug-in you should be able to just export the audio or movie with QT Pro. It sounds like the audio is corrupted from what you've said so far...

Here;
Ogg Vorbis QuickTime Component

[rorschach]

Use Divx Doctor 2 to decompress the audio, and make the file a .mov which then you can process and edit using video editing programs.

As a .mov, you can also translate it to (s)vcds and DVD using FFMPEGX, and other apps.

[terryj]

Since the audio is .ogg, I would reccomend re-recording the audio using Audio Hijack or audio Hijack Pro.
VLC will play Oggs no problem. Just "hijack" VLC,
click start recording ( make sure your prefs are
AIFF, 16bit, 48khz, 2 chan stereo), then play the file in VLC.
Once it's finished, you will have clean audio to
rejoin via "add scaled" to the video in QT PRO,
and from there you can save your file as .mov, .mpg1
( provided you have the Toast legacy Plugin) , etc.

[thoughton]

This sounds a lot like a thread over in the ffmpegx forum

Did you try the VLC audio export?

[Dunnyman]

I've tried every damn thing suggested by everyone, this damned file is just junk, some wank converted it without any clue of what he did, or how he did it, and no longer has the DV source to work from, so I'm hosed. The stupid thing shows as vorb audio, but no known way of removing it has worked, so I can only assume it's wrong in what it is showing as info, it plays perfectly fine in VLC, just nowhere else, and it can't be converted, just another fine file converted by some Windows wank with no clue, that ruined a perfectly good file. That's one thing about the mac that I like, there's afew tols for this sort of stuff, but they all work pretty good. MTR, ffmpegX, MPEGWorks, 42, Handbrake, all are excellent, but there's 456,281 programs for PC, and maybe 2 of them are worth a good crap.

[thoughton]

I think a few people have suggested recording the sound with something like AudioHijack - is that not an option for you? I realise it wont be 100% perfect, but you might be surprised how good the recording is. Do what terryj suggested and hijack VLC while you play the video. It can't go faster than realtime but its better than nothing

[Dunnyman]

Tried HiJack, but.....VLC won't work for it.....I swear there is somebody that doesn't want me to watch the cinematic classic that is King Kong Vs. Godzilla....bummed...

[fugu]

Try avidump from the mpeg4ip project.

http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net/

[Dunnyman]

Thanks for the offer of avidump, but buying the rights to the film and releasing it on DVD will be easier than earning my Master's in Computer Science, I really appreciate the offer and the spirit that it was meant in, but if something is user-friendly with a GUI, please note it, if it needs to be compiled, built and tested and whatnot in the terminal, please note that too. I can barely follow ffmpegX in the terminal, and just learned how to locate a program the other day, I'm old-school Mac guy, the 1,667 files that came with that program made zero sense to me...

Thoughton, I e-mailed the HiJack people, and they sent me the latest version (not out yet), and it works perfectly!!!!!! I never sent my money that quick for a program before!!! I love the automatic timing where it starts recording as soon as there's audio playing in the app, it should make putting this thing together a breeeze!!! It's a little slow in real time, but it works!!!! THANKS!!!!

[thoughton]

Glad to hear it worked

Totally agree on Audio Hijack's qualities. That app is a work of art. I don't use it often (my father-in-law has a lot of historical family interviews on audio tape which I'm slowly transfering it onto CD) but whenever I do it's with a sense of appreciation as to how slick the app is.

I recently also had problems (the Apple security update in June broke my Hijack somehow - linein had a lot of hiss) but Rogue Amoeba issued an fixed update very quickly.

[terryj]

Yes, a quick second to Thoughton on AH/AHPro.
One of the top ten apps for the mac, and an INDESPENSIBLE
tool for all doing A/V work on the mac.

...even though that wasn't what it was originally
intended for...