Bad H264 needs repairing

[rumplestiltskin]

I was capturing video with my Samsung MX20 (this is the SD model) and, while it was capturing, the battery went dead so I never had the chance to "stop" the recording using the record/pause button. The file (>450MB) is reported as bad by QuickTime Player and VideoSpec doesn't even show this as a real video file; it's missing virtually all of the usual info you'd expect to see (file type, codec, bitrate, frame size, etc.). My guess is that the header information wasn't written when the power went off.

I do have another small video shot using the same camcorder that is fine. I've heard of people transplanting the header info from a good file into the bad file and this somehow makes the bad file readable. Is there anyone who would be able to do this for me? I can upload the files (good one and bad one) using hotfile or whatever. (Let me know.)

Any help would be appreciated and, if the rescuer were local, I'd buy him/her a beer. By the way, the "bad" video file contains a fascinating introduction to the didgeridoo by one of the premier players in the world. It's not proprietary nor copyrighted.

[vhelp]

well, I would not depend so much on quicktime's performance in these regards though the header idea may/may not work since it depends on the video and where exactly it crapped out.

but, if this is an AVC video then you could try importing it in mp4box or yamb or tsmuxer etc etc (until you've exhausted all known tools that deal with avc streams) and let each tool try to demux whatever it can and then let it spit out a new source, maybe raw 264 or a ts—you decide. i usually do this when I have a stubborn video that needs to be worked on and this is a trick i use often for different reasons.

now, if you get it opened and created a new stream (preferably raw 264) you can then open it in dgavc and see how much video you got. then you can just re-encode to whatever container you need though you probably would have done that anyway-good or bad video.

-vhelp 5469

[rumplestiltskin]

vhelp - I should have mentioned specifically that I use a Mac (OSX 10.6.6). I'm updating my XP installation (through Parallels) with the new ".Net" components to see if MP4 Box GUI will see anything. I'll report back with any news.

Thanks.

[rumplestiltskin]

MP4 Box GUI reports "no audio, video or subtitles"

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

[rumplestiltskin]

tsmuxer says "no moov atom found". I expected that as VideoSpec didn't see any of the header info. Anyone know how to do the "header transplant"?