Best way to repair MPEG file?

[fetcher]

Hi!

I have a dozen MPEG files that are corrupted.

When editing with TMPENC, I get Illegal MPEG video stream.

I can view the MPEGs with Media Player without problem.

If I open with any other editing program, It opens only the begining of the file and stops at the bad frame(s).

I have tried MPEGScisors, Virtualdub, MyFlix and M1Edit Pro.

The only one I didn't try is BBmpeg (i'm not sure about the name).


Can anyone help me?


Fetcher

[Minuzaki]

I have the exact same situation. I have also tried running the vid file through VCDGear as mpeg --> mpeg with the "Fix MPEG errors" box checked. It ran fine and says it fixed 2 errors. I tried the new file again in TMPGenc Plus 2.5 and still get the "Illegal MPEG video stream" message.

Aarrgh!

This problem is in quite a few forum posts. Anyone who can help at all with this it would be much appreciated.

I have also run the file through Gspot and in the frame type window there are a number of red bars that supposedly indicate "discontinuities." Not sure what this means but thought it might be helpful.

Thanks.

[Soopafresh]

Five years later, we can only hope the original poster has fixed his errors...

[redwudz]

Just myself, I've had very little luck repairing MPEGs. And not much more with corrupted AVIs. When the structure of the video is damaged by missing parts, messed up audio and video, you can try what you want. But you would be lucky if even 50% of them were salvageable.

One thing you can try with either MPEGs or AVIs is encode them without any audio. You would be surprised how often just the audio is the source of problems.

In most cases, if you can't play it, it can't be fixed. What I've used in desperate cases is VLC media player and transcode the file to a different format. VLC seems to be able to play corrupted videos much better than most other players. But you are not going to replace the missing parts, so you will end up with a chopped up video, at best.

[Alex_ander]

VideoReDo (quick timecode fix option),
TMPGEnc MPEG Editor,
MPEG Video Wizard (sometimes accepts mpegs and VOBs with corrupt headers rejected by any other application).

TMPGEncPlus internal cut-edit tools can only work satisfactorily with MPEG1 video streams and is very bad at joining audio streams and and MPEG2 VBR (audio synch problems). Any of the above tools does cut/join properly.
There's also a free tool: Cuttermaran.

[Minuzaki]

Heh I didn't even realize how old the first post was.

In most cases, if you can't play it, it can't be fixed.

The thing is the file will play fine in both MPC and VLC but I want to cut it up into separate pieces and I cannot do that in either TMPGenc (where the whole video appears I just can't cut it up) or VirtualDubMod (where only about the first half of the video appears).

Thanks Alex_ander I will try working with these programs and see if I have any success.

Thanks for the quick repsonses everyone.[/quote]

[chrisn79]

Yes- I know this thread has been started almost a century ago Never mind:
I had the same problem with a broken MPEG2 video and found the Video Repair Tool (www.grauonline.de). It works very neat and the demo already recovers 50%.
Before wasting much time in VLC / Mplayer trying to repair corrupted video files, you should test it...

[Baldrick]

chrisn: PLEASE STOP dig up old threads. One more video repair tool post and you are banned.

[theewizard]

spammer,
looks like duck, quacks like a duck, its a duck
spammer pushing his own 'commercial' software