Broken / Corrupted AVI while capturing

[jabroni]

Hi, I have an AVI video that was corrupted while being captured on a DVR (no sound). The DVR saves files in 1.99GB after about 4 hours of footage. For some reason the file wasn't saved correctly after the 4 hours and the video wont play. Windows media player is reporting the file to be over 3000 hours long.

I used a couple programs to try repairing the AVI, but none of them worked except for DivFix. After using DivFix I can see picture, but Windows media player still says it is over 2500 hours long. I used Virtualdub's program and I can scroll ahead in the video and see all of the footage is there, but it is spread out over 2500 hours long and will not play smoothly.

If anyone has any ideas here, it would be greatly appreciated.

I've also tried Divxrepair and DivFix++ to no avail. I've determined that the header is a RIFF through a hex editor, but I have no idea what to do beyond that.

[Baldrick]

Try cut out the main video with Virtualdub and then save it. Use video->direct stream copy and audio->direct stream copy and file->save as a new avi.

[jabroni]

Hi, I tried doing what you said, but it didnt make any difference that I can see. It seems like the fixed AVI from DivFix is playing about 1 second of footage per hour on the media player. Is there any video player that will allow a fast forward so I can view the video at normal speed? Either that or something that will fix the time so the AVI can be viewed normally.

Thanks.

[jabroni]

For future reference, I am posting how I fixed this problem.

The Problem:

AVI file corrupted / damaged after video was captured with a DVR. Actual video footage was supposed to be approximately 4 hours long. The AVI file showed a blank picture during playback and total time was reported at over 3500 hours.

The Fix:

I downloaded and tried almost all the AVI repair programs with no success. The only program that seemed to make a difference was DivFix (not DivFix++). Load the AVI into DivFix and make sure 'Cut out bad parts' is checked. Click on 'Rebuild Index' and wait for it to finish. When you play the new AVI created by DivFix the file is still 3500+ hours, but you can now see picture.

Find and download VirtualDubMod (I used version 1.5.10...). Then open the new DivFix AVI file with VDubMod. If you click on 'File - File Information' you can see that the FPS is really low (mine was 0.003 fps). Click on 'Video - Frame Rate...', under 'Source rate adjustment' select 'Change so video and audio durations match'. Click 'File - Save As...' and make sure you have a lot of free space on your hard drive. My uncorrupted AVI's save at 1.99GB, and the same for this corrupt AVI --- the new file after fixing the FPS in VDubMod saved the file at 95GB. There are probably different ways to fix the frame rate, but I didn't have the time or the patience to figure it out; I only needed to watch the video footage one time (B.S. for work).

Now the video should play exactly as it should despite being almost 50 times its origional file size. NOTE - I did not capture audio with the DVR, so I'm not sure if this has any affect on audio. Cheers.