Help with an damage .avi video

[gorosz]

I just found your forum and I'm hoping someone can help me.

I recently recorded a video on my Fuji Finepix s1500 digital camera. The other day I put my memory card in my computer and all the videos and pictures were viewable. Today I put my memory card in and only one video file cannot be played. Its the largest video I took, it's 1.16gb, about a 30min clip. When I try to play the video Windows Media Player tells me that it can't play the file type, or the codec needed to play the file isn't on my computer. I noticed that under the properties of the file it doesn't have any info on frame with and height, frame rate, length, etc. Although it still lists it as an .avi file, along with all the date created info. I've tried downloading a few programs I could find that say they can repair damaged .avi files, but none of them worked. All of them say they cannot recognize the file type.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can repair/fix this file? Unfortunately its the one video on the card I really care about. It's a video of my niece opening her presents at her first birthday. Any help, or suggestions, are greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

Start with mediainfo to tell you what the file contains. AVI is a container, it is how the video and audio are compressed within that you need to work out.

Once you know how it is compressed, you can work out what you need to play it. Chances are that VLC or The KM Player will play the file without the need to install anything else. Installing FFDShow *might* allow Windows Media Player to play it, but without knowing exactly what the file is, it is hard to say if you will have to configure it in a special way or not.

Which brings us back to mediainfo. Post a Tree View from mediainfo here, and we can tell you what is what.

If the file is not damaged (and so far nothing indicates that it is), do not run a recovery tool over. Chances are it will do more harm than good, and will actually damage a perfectly good file.

[redwudz]

Try playing it with VLC Player or MPC-HC. VLC especially handles most formats, a lot more than Windows Media Player. And drop it into MediaInfo, tree view. That should tell you quite a bit of info about the file. Most times to repair a file, you have to be able to open it or have some idea why it doesn't work.

And welcome to our forums.

[gorosz]

Thanks. I will try both of those suggestions and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the info.

G

[gorosz]

Here is the tree view from MediaInfo.

[gorosz]

Also, I did try FFDShow and that didn't work.

[sum_guy]

I see that the file is on your desktop, is it possible it's still on your memory card? it may not have copied to your c: drive correctly or it was damaged in the copy/move process.

[gorosz]

I copied the damaged file to my C: just to work with it. The original, yet still damaged file, is still on the memory card. I wish that was the case though. Thanks for the thought.