Checking video files

[unknown12]

Hi,
I have a few DVDs with DIVX/XVID files on them. A few of the files either don't play, or stop playing half way through on my XBOX Media Centre (Original XBOX with XMBC). Is there anyway I can "scan" the files individually to find a "bad" one?

Cheers.

[guns1inger]

You can try virtualdub's scan for bad frames feature, or DivFix or open the files in AVI Demux and see if it complains.

However these will only pick simple issues like broken indexes. The usual cause for files stopping playback halfway through is because there is only half a file there. If these have come from downloads, then this may be the case. Many downloaders (torrent or multi-part file downloaders) pre-allocate the disk space required for the download so you don't run out of space before it is done. However, if the download ceases or fails for some reason, the file will appear to be the right size, but the content will be truncated. G-spot can tell you if this is the case.

[jman98]

To add to guns1inger's excellent post, note that if you got these via BitTorrent that all it takes is for one copy to become corrupted (whether by accident or deliberately) and then all that ends up being available on the torrent is a corrupted copy. It has also been alleged that Hollywood is making corrupted files of recent movies available to "poison the stream" so to speak so that it becomes very difficult indeed to find a playable copy of the film on P2P networks.

[unknown12]

Thanks, but they wern't from bittorrent (Anyway, don't most clients check piece hashes?).
I'll give those apps a try.

[primus_fan2001]

Both of these tools are great at fixing broken files:

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/Digital_Video_Repair

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/DivFix