iTunes kills video file

[ChainsawAsh]

I have an .mp4 movie on my hard drive that I imported into iTunes. To organize it, I added the tags and all that (author, year, etc.) Then I tried to add artwork, and iTunes froze. Now the .mp4 won't play in any program whatsoever, not VLC, not QuickTime, not even MPEG Streamclip.

Any suggestions? A similar thing happened a few weeks ago and I just got rid of the file, but this one took a long time to synch the sound and tweak some of the subtitles and such personally and I don't want to have to do that all over again.

[terryj]

what verison of iTunes?
What's under the hood of the Mpeg-4?
h.264? ac3 audio?

When's the last time you ran Disc Utility?
Avaialble space on HD?
more specifics please......

[ChainsawAsh]

iTunes 7.4.2 (4)

~50 GB available HD

Ran Disk Utility last week

h.264 .mp4, 624x272, 128kbps mono AAC audio 48 kHz, 1500 kbps, length 2 hrs 1 min 4 sec

[terryj]

what if you take it in steps?
Add the author, year stuff first.
Say ok, let it put that in the file.
then open it back up, and try to add the artwork?

Last what type of graphics file is the artwork?
For my files, I use a 60px X 60 px 72dpi Jpeg
saved at medium (5) resolution.
Doing PNG or TIFF always causes my iTunes to hang.....
Could be too huge a graphic file for it to embed into the mp4.......
I use small files as the only places i really see the graphic are in iTunes
or my 5G ipod, and I don't need that big of a graphic file.

[ChainsawAsh]

It's not all that large as far as artwork goes, I've added larger to longer movies. My issue is that I need to find out how to recover the now-corrupt .mp4, because I most certainly don't want to everything again (I had to replace the beginning, re-do incorrect subtitles - which meant re-doing all of them since that meant I couldn't rip with any on - and replace the soundtrack). I'm sure that if I can't find a way I will, eventually, re-do it all again.

The same thing happened with Kingdom of Heaven a while ago after I combined the two halves into one .mp4, but that was substantially less complicated to re-do.

[terryj]

My issue is that I need to find out how to recover the now-corrupt .mp4,

if you can play it you could hijack it.
But if you can't play it or even open it,
then there's no chance for recovery.

[ChainsawAsh]

I was afraid of that. Thanks anyway.

[terryj]

u r welcome.