Interesting MP4 issue

[bakonfreek]

Alright, I have an interesting one here (or generally frustrating, it really depends on how you look at things of this sort).

I received a .mp4 video file from a friend telling me that it's "bad". I thought it was just a regular codec issue and I could fix it with something like megui or straight FFMpeg. Well, megui tells me that the video cannot render, FFMpeg spits a bunch of crap back at me, VLC sits, media player classic says it failed to render, Vegas can't open it, After Effects wants nothing to do with it...

The most interesting thing is that this thing lacks really any sort of metadata other than the size (it's just shy of 1GB so there's data in it).

I haven't tried the almost magical blu-ray/USB player (will play literally anything with video data), but I have a bad feeling that this MP4 is missing something in the file that would otherwise allow it to play (I'm being entirely pessimistic and putting my money on that, but who knows, it could be a simple fix). I would upload the whole thing, but I don't think I'm legally allowed to do that (it was sent to me via a microsd card in an envelope, I'll take that as a sign since dropbox would probably have been easier).

If needed, I can post screens or even "crappy camcorder pointed at the monitor" video of the problems.

This might be pertinent.

ffmpeg version N-38632-g4cda8aa Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Mar  8 2012 02:38:08 with gcc 4.5.0 20100414 (Fedora MinGW 4.5.0-1.fc14)
  configuration: --prefix=/var/www/users/research/ffmpeg/snapshots/build --arch=x86 --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i686-pc-mingw32- --cc='ccache i686-pc-mingw32-gcc' --enable-w32threads --enable-memalign-hack --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-cross-compile --enable-static --disable-shared --extra-libs='-lws2_32 -lwinmm' --extra-cflags='--static -I/var/www/users/research/ffmpeg/snapshots/build/include' --extra-ldflags='-static -L/var/www/users/research/ffmpeg/snapshots/build/lib' --enable-bzlib --enable-zlib --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --enable-libx264 --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvpx --disable-decoder=libvpx
  libavutil      51. 42.100 / 51. 42.100
  libavcodec     54. 10.100 / 54. 10.100
  libavformat    54.  2.100 / 54.  2.100
  libavdevice    53.  4.100 / 53.  4.100
  libavfilter     2. 63.100 /  2. 63.100
  libswscale      2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100
  libswresample   0.  7.100 /  0.  7.100
  libpostproc    52.  0.100 / 52.  0.100
E:\bad mp4\20180128_141540.mp4: Invalid data found when processing input

*Edit*: tried opening the thing in mkvtoolnix and Windows Explorer crashed.

[davexnet]

Perhaps the file header is missing or damaged. (A quick look at the beginning of the file with a hex editor,
compared to a known good file may be useful)
You can try and see if this software will repair it (it is free to test to see if it works)
https://www.videohelp.com/software/Video-Repair-Tool

This program attempts to reconstruct the file based on info from a known good file from the same camera

[bakonfreek]

I think I found the problem. Hex editor shows '.' and '00' in the applicable sections. No header and garbage data. How would an Android video get that way? I assume it was recorded on an Android phone because of the file name, but then again, given the circumstances surrounding getting the video, I don't think I want to dig into what exactly happened. Also, on the repair tool, if it could do anything, I wouldn't try it since I'm not getting paid to do this XD (my friend is a cheap bastard).

[crtlbreak]

the only way to successfully fix this is to use the phone (which can actually play the damned file) and install mediaconverter on your android.
then convert the files on your phone to a suitable format and then continue from there ..... I have been wrestling with this for 4 days!!


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AndroidA.MediaConverter&hl=en_GB