VLC cannot play MPEG-2 (.mpg) file (VLC cannot identify the audio or ...)

[Jeppe]

This is driving me nuts.

About a month ago, my wife bought a vhs-movie, which I promised to digitize. Now I have done so using EzCap and the accompanying software ArcSoft ShowBiz. The resulting file, which is an .mpg one (I used the setting mpeg-2), plays perfectly well on my own PC, regardless if I use VLC, Leawo, or an app from Windows called Movies and TV. However, after transferring the mpg-file from my PC to an SD-card and then from the SD-card to my wife's PC, it plays on none of the three players. The file is, as you would expect, exactly the same size after being transferred. At first, there was just a short message: "VLC cannot play the file", but lately the error message has been the following: "VLC cannot identify the audio or vdeo codec." In an attempt to solve the problem I have uninstalled VLC media player from my wife's computer and downloaded and installed the most recent version of that player, and also, I have downloaded and installed on her PC the Leawo player version I have on my own PC. To our great frustration, however, that movie still refuses to hit my wife's computer screen. The only good news is, the file still plays perfectly well on my PC. What may be going on??? Can anyone figure out what is going wrong - and, more importantly, what to do to solve the problem? I should be very grateful. VLC boasts: Plays most codecs without the need for extra codec-packs: MPEG-2, MPEG-4 … and offers no codec-packs for download. And I cannot figure out, what crucial bit of software is failing on my wife's PC (and a couple of other PCs on which we have tried in vain to play the file, but are present on my own.
Best regards

[sneaker]

To make sure the file didn't get corrupted during the transfer compare checksum (md5, sh1, crc32 or something...) on the two PCs.

[DB83]

One other thing you can try if you can not do the checksum test is to transfer the file back to your PC from the SD card but to another location so that you do not overwrite the existing one.

If it does not play then you do have a bad transfer. Even the SD card itself may be at fault especially a large one which may not be as large as it claims to be.

[Jeppe]

Thank you very much, sneaker.
This actually solved my problem. Checksums proved not to be the same for the copy (copy.mpg) on my SD-card as for the original file (original.mpg) on my harddisk. Instead, I copied the file to a DVD-RW and from there to my wife's harddisk. And that wordked.
Later, I tried with another SD-card (4 GB), and that seemed to go perfectly well, with all matching checksums, whereas repeated copying to the original SD-card (32 GB) produced consistently non-matching checksums. Do you, sneaker, or somebody else know, if there can be a problem with individual SD-cards, and, if so, what might be the nature of that problem?

[Jeppe]

Oh, I am sorry, DB83. Thanks very much to you also. Actually, I might have been very thankful for your very useful suggestion, had I not been lucky enough to find out how to do a checksum comparison, which I had never tried before.

I think my "32 GB" SD-card might be the culprit. I have already had a full refund for one SD-card!

[jagabo]

Do you, sneaker, or somebody else know, if there can be a problem with individual SD-cards

Of course. Also beware of counterfeit cards. Crooks buy small cards, remark them and format them as larger cards, then sell them for more money. They appear to work when there's only a little data on them, but files get corrupt as the card fills up. If you got a really good price on that 32 GB card it's probably counterfeit. There are tools that can check for this. Just search...

[Jeppe]

Thanks for the info, jagabo. Nice to know there's a method of detection out there.