De- or uncompress .mov file

[Bandwidth]

A friend of mine sent me an .MOV file that is nearly 1gb in size. When I play it, I get one image and 0:00 of video. When I told him this, he said he had inadvertently done something to the files, compressed them perhaps, and that he was trying to figure out how to undo what he had done.

Any thoughts on what the problem might be and how to fix it?

[Selur]

Can your friend playback his version of the file?
Can VLC play the file?
Can Quicktime playback the file?

[Bandwidth]

No, he can't play back the file either and apparently has others with the same issue from the same shoot and download from his camera or phone.

I've tried Quicktime, VLC, DivXPlayer, and iTunes. None of them will play the video back.

[Selur]

I would then recommend to try one of the mov repair tools out there, but it sounds like there might me something wrong with the SD card of the camera,...

[netmask56]

Does MediaInfo show anything?

[Bandwidth]

I'm attaching a screenshot of the MediaInfo analysis. Hopefully you can see this as the site won't let me put it into this post.

[Bandwidth]

I would then recommend to try one of the mov repair tools out there, but it sounds like there might me something wrong with the SD card of the camera,...

Can you suggest such a repair tool to me? Thank you all for your help with this.

[raffriff42]

[Attachment 44450 - Click to enlarge]

I'm attaching a screenshot of the MediaInfo analysis.

video stream: dmb1

https://www.fourcc.org/dmb1/
"Hardware codec used by Matrox Rainbow Runner video capture product. Apparently a form of Motion JPEG."

https://www.google.com/search?q=decode+dmb1+video
VLC and mplayer -- and some others -- say they can decode this. Give those two a try. (AFAICT, ffmpeg does not decode it.)

Don't install any codecs or software other than the ones I just mentioned without first asking the experts here!

[Cornucopia]

Also, QT wouldn't decode it using one of its stock codecs (e.g. mjpeg), so you would have to have installed the specific matrox qt component in order for qt to be able to play it. That or edit the fourcc into something that the stock ones could handle.

Scott

[redwudz]

MediaInfo seems to think the file is 197ms long. Which is unlikely. I use the 'Text' output in MediaInfo.

What I've done with problematic .MOV files is try to open them in VirtualDub FilterMod
in it's HEX editor. (Under 'Tools'). If you see a lot of zeros, probably no video there.

Typical MediaInfo file of a .MOV from my camera:

[Cornucopia]

Good catch. 912 x 8 / 0.197 = 37Gbps! Something's up. Also 9.4fps?

Corrupted, most likely.

Scott

[Bandwidth]

MediaInfo seems to think the file is 197ms long. Which is unlikely. I use the 'Text' output in MediaInfo.

What I've done with problematic .MOV files is try to open them in VirtualDub FilterMod
in it's HEX editor. (Under 'Tools'). If you see a lot of zeros, probably no video there.

Typical MediaInfo file of a .MOV from my camera:

Is there a similar tool for a Mac? Is this worth pursuing or is it likely that his SD card was corrupted when he recorded these videos? Thanks again for your help, everyone.

[raffriff42]

Try playing the file in VLC and mplayer; they are both cross-platform.

(EDIT to address your question re: a Mac hex editor: Hex Fiend)