Potentially annoying lazy question :) --- mystery audio

[EddyH]

OK, I have this downloaded AVI... when I try to play it, windows complains about an unknown format or something. IIRC it tries two or three times to download codecs from M$, the WMA ones I think, but once they (re-)install (again!!) it still doesn't work and the file just plays silently. Not so bad, as it has subtitles, but does mess up the enjoyment of the movie quite a bit.

It may be AC3 or something, but considering the video source is quite plainly a rather tired-out old fan-subbed VHS, and the entire AVI is only 380mbs for 90+ minutes, this is highly unlikely (probably more like scratchy mono at 32kbits). TMPGEnc, VirtualDub, etc, all have quite severe headaches trying to examine it - VD won't open it at all, and another (also silent, but better video) partial copy claims to have code 0161 audio - aka WMA.

Anyone got any clues? Some dude in IRC (what a useful source ) told me that there's a tool I get download to examine the file and find out the true codec, but I lost that address, name, and so on. Argh.

[narked]

Get GSpot and open avi with it. It will tell you what codec is needed and whether you have it installed

[EddyH]

GSpot, yeah, that sounds familiar. Thanks!

[EddyH]

CRAZINESS. That's the only word.

OK I've examined it in GSpot... the result it gives me: My AVI file is actually a QUICKTIME! (WTF...). With DivX video, and 'no audio stream'.

Goddamn I hate quicktime. What's going on here? I'll put my money on a stupid-ass Mac encoder for this one, or perhaps someone working in a CD-Extra studio.

So... I rename it to .MOV, as it "should be", and load it into Quicktime, only to find - the VIDEO won't play now! And the audio, though it works, is a bit stuttery. I can load the same file (as a MOV off the hard disk, and AVI off CD) into Quicktime and WiMP at the same time, and play it like that Only I can't go full screen as every now and then, I have to pause the audio for a quick 1/3 of a second to bring it back into sync!

New questions then:

1/ Is it possible, and/or should I have DivX codecs loaded for Quicktime? (in the Movie Properties multibox, it quite happily lists all the video/audio details... DivX 3, I think, and the audio is now positively identified as .. wait for it.. MP3!! With the WMA 4CC and everything. Grr)

2/ Where would I get these, then.... There's probably a guide somewhere on here, but as most people will use WMP on their PCs, or something else for Linux, or QT only on Macs, it's likely obfuscated and buried deep.

3/ So now what the heck am I supposed to do with this file as regards converting to VCD, making it so I can watch a damn good film (so far as I've been bothered to endure in this form, despite the fairly poor tape it was taken from) fullscreen, with continuous sound, and without having to manually tweak it every five or ten minutes?

Some people, cuh, they shouldn't be allowed near a DivX encoder, not for toffee.

[EddyH]

Umm perhaps I should add with that comment that I'm not implying all Mac encoding peoples are stupid asses. Only the particular nitwit what made this file

And if anyone who works making QT videos for CD Extras reads this and is offended by it.... serves you right. Bring back the sodding VCD-compatible MPGs that I used to buy CD singles for, you fools!

[sterno]

I can't offer you a solution, but I certainly admire the problem. Have you tried using any media players other than Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player? A third-party player with its own way of doing things might work better with odd combinations of codecs. Also, exactly which video codec was it? There are all the divx versions, plus 3ivx, MS MPEG-4, etc., and of course you should try grabbing the latest QuickTime release if you haven't already. I think that some version of MS MPEG-4 actually works fine in QuickTime for Mac but MS doesn't make that codec available to QuickTime for Windows (oh, the irony...).

Windows Media Player will happily play things with the wrong extension, so if somebody previous to you had everything to play it but had to guess at the extension he would have been blissfully unaware of the problem. You could probably take any movie file in any format you can play on your computer, name it "movie.avi", and it would open just fine when you double-clicked. WMP is simultaneously intelligent (it actually checks to see what it's playing) and stupid (it fails to tell you when the extension is completely wrong, like an ASF named .mpg).

[EddyH]

Mm, seeing you say that, I'm thinking even more that it's a mac file then. All that quicktime will say on the format front is that the video is "Divx (MS) codec", 320x240, millions of colours (audio is 22khz stereo mp3). To it's credit, for once, QT does try to access the apple server to download 'appropriate software' IE the codec, but fails to even connect.

Well, here at my university there are iMacs (maybe that's why the rez is so low and CPU-friendly? (dodges macuser-thrown tomatoes)) with CD drives, maybe I'll go watch my film in the MacLab, assuming the things can grok PC CDROMs...

Heck, see if I end up with anyone else watching over my shoulder, and how long it takes the admin staff to eject me!

Still clueless on how to convert the thing though, humph. Even if i try to make an .m1v without specifying any audio input, TMPGEnc chokes. Alternative tools for splitting out the video and audio streams to TMPGEnc/Vdub?