Corrupted/damaged video file .avi

[aizen]

I recently opened a video file with the format of .avi and it wasn't working so I surfed around the internet for a while downloading programs that I could use to fix it and that might be able to play it. the video file is 7.30 GB in size, but the programs that I've been able to open it it and repair it are only able to repair the first 10 minutes and 53 seconds of the video when I think it's either around 40 minutes long or it's over an hour. Does anybody know of anything I can do to get the rest of it back?

[aedipuss]

delete it and move on.

[sanlyn]

Not necessarily, but there's not much info to work with here. To have "40 minutes" of AVI video would suggest (a) extremely lossy compression at that file size, but "AVI" is just a container that could be any of dozens of brands of compressed video, or (b) if it's not lossy compression, a 7.3 GB AVI could not likely contain 40 minutes of video IMHO.

[sanlyn]

AVI format has a know limitation when dealing with files with several gigabytes (more than 4 GB). That could explain the issue with such a big file. In any case, seems you have successfully repaired part of it. What's the format of the enclosed clip ?

FAT32 partitions limit file sizes to 4GB. I use NTFS partitions with WinXP and capture 30 to 40GB AVI files all the time.

[aizen]

Everything I know so far is that it was working for many months until I opened it in adobe AE and windows movie maker while showing somebody how to do something. After this time it wouldn't open saying that the movie player didn't support the codec which when I go on properties it says the file type is Microsoft Video which I think the codec is CRAM (this is what it says when opened in GSpot. I said in my earlier message that I managed to repair almost 11 minutes of the video this was done by ASF-AVI-RM-WMV Repair. I'm thinking that if I could use a program to split the 40 minute video up then I could just do 4 repairs then put them together using WMM or a similar program. In the details page for the video there are no details on Description, Video, Audio, Media, Origin or Content but there are details for File which I've already said (Item type and Size) I'm unsure what else to tell you... If you think you can help me and would like more information then please tell me where I can locate the information and I will post it when I read your message Thank you =]

[jman98]

CRAM is almost 20 years old so whoever created that file and dumped it in an AVI container had no idea what they were doing. None of the normal AVI repair programs will work with that crap. You can try AsfBin as it can normally cut Windows Media but it may not know how to work with an AVI container. Honestly at some point you may just have to give up as you're looking at an awful lot of difficult and time consuming work for 40 minutes of video and it might be better to just buy it somewhere if you can and get on with your life. Anybody who would put together something like this in an AVI container really doesn't know what the heck they are doing so do not be surprised if you get it repaired only to find other horrible, unexpected problems later on in the video.

[aizen]

Thank you for you post Jman98, I'm actually the person who made the file using some sort of desktop recording software. You'd be right in saying that I had no idea of how I'd even done that. So I unfortunately cannot buy a different copy as it's unique and very important to me. therefore I'm willing to go through a lot of trouble to get this working again and if or when i do get it working will be making several copies which I should have done in the first place. I'll try AsfBin and then see how that is and will leave another message explaining what happened.

[aizen]

AsfBin will not allow me to open the video file and I think it will only work with files that are of WMV and ASF formats. So I tried to convert the video file into WMV using any video converter which resulted in an error message of "cannot get media information of video file <file name.avi>, insert failed!" Where <file name> is replaced with the location of the file.

[sanlyn]

There seems to be more information on this thread concerning opening CRAM (Microsoft Video 1) files in VirtualDub:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/258802-where-to-get-CRAM-codec

I tried following a few code links, but they almost all lead to AVS Converter, which I've always found to be a hassle. Apparently ffdshow has a CRAM decoder (disabled by default). This thread explains some settings for ffdshow and WMP, but enabling ffdshow's codec might let you open the AVI in something like VirtualDub:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/337972-Microsoft-Video-1-Files-won-t-play