GSpot...yet to identify

[Greyhorne]

I've had this small program for a few years now, and yet despite wide acclaim, I've never seen it identify a single video file, over a series of at least 8 - 10 separate occasions.

Granted, its only been called upon when all my players fail to open one, but thats when I'm generally seeking specialized analysis.

Perhaps its user error, but I typically right click on the video file in question, tonights happened to be a suspect .AVI, then
"open" with GSpot.

Always loads some 190 codecs then reads,

File type: Unknown
Mime type: Unknown

I can't dismiss the possibility they've all been corrupt, but I've only tried it with files which the players
stated required additional codecs to play, any appearing corrupt were simply deleted.

What gives?

[redwudz]

Gspot is a bit old and has a hard time recognizing some of the newer codecs like H.264. But it should do fine with MPEG video and some AVI codecs like Divx/Xvid. It is a handy program, though, and I use it's 'Render' function to analyze some playback problems.

But I use MediaInfo more often and it does work with the newer codecs. But it doesn't give as much info as Gspot, so I keep both handy.

[Greyhorne]

Cool!
Having one to cross check the other will help resolve doubt.
If neither can read a specific file, I'll conclude its most likely corrupt.

Thanks redwudz!

[redwudz]

I also try opening a problematic video file with VLC player as it works with most common video formats and uses it's own internal codecs, so no additional ones needed. Much better than installing a handful of codecs that may cause problems with your system.

AVIDemux and Virtualdub will also give you some information about a file if it's a format that they can understand. You can sometimes repair a file by re-encoding it, if it will open at all. But generally, if MediaInfo and Gspot can't find anything there, it's a corrupt file.

You may also be aware that some video files off the net are fakes, placed there for different reasons, but totally unreadable.

[jh443]

In all the (literally) thousands of times I've used GSpot, the only time I've ever had trouble is when the file simply wasn't a video file.

I like to go through all the vids I download and give them the proper file extension, and I use GSpot in its batch mode to accomplish this. It's capable of identifying ZIP files as such (and I believe RAR as well) - even if the ZIP doesn't have a video in it.