Issue with captured video: 673GB AVI = 4.19 sec??

[photodyer]

My apologies if I am posting in the wrong section . . . I'm admittedly a novice and am beyond confused over this.

I have been using Ulead VIdeoStudio 10 SE (packaged with EasyCap device) to capture video from a wireless surveillance camera. I am attempting to capture for approximately 14 hours continuously, which in raw avi is generating huge files.

To handle this, I installed a 1TB drive last night to dump the file to. When I came home this morning, I found a file "uvs110125-002.AVI" in my storage folder, and Ulead acted odd as I logged on. Anyway, the file is over 673GB in size which seemed appropriate given the shorter captures I've done without incident. But when I tried to play the file, it only played for 4 seconds, supposedly complete!

The only clue I see to the issue is that there are two clips listed at the top of Ulead--"uvs110124-002.AVI" and "uvs110125-002.AVI". However, when I click on the "124" file, Ulead throws up the error "Original file [I:\Store\VC\uvs110124-002.AVI] doesn't exist." And indeed, I do not find said file in the folder.

The huge file behaves the same in Nero Showtime, playing for only 4.19 sec.

Any clue what may have happened and how I might recover this file? This file may contain crucial evidence that needs to be viewed.

Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer

[Baldrick]

Have you tried open it with a video editor like avidemux, virtualdub? Only 4 seconds?

[photodyer]

I just installed and tried virtualdub; same thing. 4.178 seconds, 342 frames. I'm guessing that ulead did something strange because of the length of video I tried to capture, but I've no idea what.

[photodyer]

There was a message in virtualdub about the clip: "AVI stream 0 (video) has a non-zero start position of 12 samples (+147ms). Virtualdub does not currently support non-zero start time and the stream will be interpreted as starting from zero."

[DB83]

A 14 hour uncompressed avi would probably exceed 1TB anyway.

And if it did I suspect there would be so many dropped frames to render the video un-watchable or even trash the HDD in trying to record it for such a long period and at such high sustained data.

So I must ask, why uncompressed ?. Ulead will capture in dvd quality mpeg2. That would only be some 56 gig.

[Brad]

Even VirtualDub won't capture for more than 8 hours lossless unless you change the "superindex" settings so I'm not surprised something that isn't a dedicated capture app can't do 14-hour uncompressed properly.

[DB83]

There is nothing wrong with Ulead's capture app - use it quite often but only for Mpeg2.

I have had problems with it doing DV - although its own editor can open and use, others can not. Never tried uncompressed for more than a few minutes.

But have you tried opening the file in the Ulead editor ?