WM6 Mpeg4 Videos No Sound On PC

[leebo]

Searched a bit but didn't find this problem posted (but I'm sure it must have been, just can't find it).

I have an HTC Fuze cellphone running WM6.1. I can record video clips in Mpeg4 format using the built in camera. The videos play fine - in the phone. But when I transfer them to my PC running Vista (32 bit) with the latest service pack, I have problems playing the files.

WM 11 wont play them. It searches for a codec forever without finding it.
QT gives me an error message: Error - 2041: an invalid sample description was found in the movie.

VLC player plays the videos fine - but without audio.

Sent it to my brother who also has Vista, same results. so there must be a missing audio codec? I thought VLC had them all?

[Baldrick]

What is the audio codec? open with mediainfo and see what it says.

And try play using smplayer.

[leebo]

Baldrick to the rescue!

Audio is AMR 387Kbps 8000hz 2 channel.

But smplayer couldn't even play the file. Error code 62097.

C:/Program Files/SMPlayer/mplayer/mplayer.exe -noquiet -nofs -nomouseinput -sub-fuzziness 1 -identify -slave -vo direct3d, -nokeepaspect -priority abovenormal -framedrop -nodr -double -wid 1119744 -colorkey 0x020202 -monitorpixelaspect 1 -ass -embeddedfonts -ass-line-spacing 0 -ass-font-scale 1 -ass-styles C:/Users/LeeAdmin/.smplayer/styles.ass -fontconfig -font Arial -subfont-autoscale 0 -subfont-osd-scale 20 -subfont-text-scale 20 -subcp ISO-8859-1 -subpos 100 -volume 40 -cache 2000 -osdlevel 0 -vf-add screenshot -slices -af scaletempo,equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 -softvol -softvol-max 110 C:/Users/LeeAdmin/Videos/Janet Griffith Observatory.mp4

MPlayer Sherpya-SVN-r28311-4.2.5 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+ (Family: 6, Model: 10, Stepping: 0)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Setting process priority: abovenormal

Playing C:/Users/LeeAdmin/Videos/Janet Griffith Observatory.mp4.

Cache fill: 0.00% (0 bytes)
libavformat file format detected.
ID_VIDEO_ID=0
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
ID_AUDIO_ID=1
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO: [mp4v] 320x240 24bpp 30.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
ID_FILENAME=C:/Users/LeeAdmin/Videos/Janet Griffith Observatory.mp4
ID_DEMUXER=lavfpref
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=mp4v
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=320
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=240
ID_VIDEO_FPS=30.000
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=1.3333
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=samr
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
ID_AUDIO_RATE=8000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=1
ID_LENGTH=59.30
ID_SEEKABLE=1
ID_CHAPTERS=0
[ass] auto-open
Opening video filter: [screenshot]
[ass] Init

[leebo]

Never solved the problem. I lost my phone in the meantime, so I'll wait and see what I end up replacing it with. If I get the same phone I'll be back here I'm sure.

[tomlee59]

AMR is a special speech codec used in cellphones and virtually nowhere else. I'm not surprised that VLC doesn't know what to do with it; AMR was not designed for general-purpose audio -- it's fine-tuned for voice only. What's odd about your stats is that the bitrate is crazy high -- 387kb/s -- for an audio track sampled at 8kHz. Wacko. I'm not sure I believe it, but maybe that's what they need to do to get AMR to be somewhat useful for other than voice.

There are lots (ok, some) open-source tools for converting AMR audio into more widely supported types, like MP3 or Ogg. You'll have to perform that conversion first before standard media players will be able to make sense of what you have. So demux the MP4 track, transcode the AMR into something useful, and remux. I don't see any way around this workflow until media players start supporting these cellphone formats.

[Chris K]

Audio is AMR 387Kbps 8000hz 2 channel.

Must be a mis-interpretation by MediaInfo (perhaps it should read 38.7 kbps).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_multi-rate_compression

AMR-NB max bitrate 12.2 kbps, 1 channel.

AMR-WB+ max bitrate 48 kbps, 2 channels.

AMR audio was taken off from FFmpeg somewhere end 2007 early 2008 because it appeared to be licensed.
I guess that's also the reason why mplayer won't play it (anymore)?

I noticed that my recent FFdshow install (April 20, 2009) still supports AMR audio,
but if the OP's clips are AMR-WB+, I doubt FFdshow will decode it.

[spam-man]

AFTER 18 MONTH'S OF SEARCHING, I FINALLY HAVE A SOLUTION!
(and it's dead simple too!)

I was able to change my HTC device to "Save As" H.263 format (rather then .mp4), and the file that is created now works on my PC using Quicktime (but not VLC or Windows Media Player 11).

I don't know what the root cause of the original issue is, it's been a problem for me for the last year & a half. You would have thought in the design of Windows Mobile 6 Microsoft would have ensured video files created would have been compatible with Windows XP/ Vista for playback!

Anyway, the solution above should work for anyone with an HTC/Windows Mobile device, who wants to play their video back on their PC (all they need is Quicktime on their PC).