Something wrong with files or software?

[exequor]

I have downloaded a few *.avi movies off the internet lately and for a couple of them i noticed that everytime the movie reaches 26 seconds the motion stops but you continue to hear sound and the "time progress bar" (the bar that scrolls as the movie goes along) continues at the normal rate, and if I try to advance it it doesn't affect the video on the screen.

I was wondering whether this is a problem with the file or I need to get some codec or something? Is it possible that I can decode the movie then re-encode it or something?

 

[dduardo]

What program are you using to play the movies? Try playing them in quicktime or something other than windows media player.

 

[physicsCU]

It is probably a codec issue.

Download GSpot. Do a google search for it. It will tell you what codec you need and whether or not you have it.

 

[exequor]

I was trying to play it in quicktime but it seems like i have an old version because it told me that there is some compressor issue

I got GSPot (neat little app). it seems like i have all the necessary codecs so I think that I will just download a divx player and see if that helps.

Below is the link for a screenshot of what I got in gspot:
http://www.themodule.net/img/gspot.gif

 

[dduardo]

I don't think it is a codec issue. If it starts showing video and sound then it is correctly decoding the movie. I think this is a player issue. Quicktime isn't going to play divx and this is why I would try going to the start menu->run and type "mplayer2", without the quotes. This will open the old version of media player.

 

[physicsCU]

Try playing it in WMP10. Surprisingly, it is the best program for playing .avi files. But I will try the divx player to see how that works out.

EDIT: OK, the divx player works as well, but if you have a multi-file movie, WMP10 is better because you can queue up the second/third/... file and it will just run the whole movie.

 

[exequor]

I have tried every player that I could lay my hands on (quicktime, winamp, wmp9, etc. and even dvd players like powerDVD) and the same thing happens. I think the problem is with the video part of the file.

 

[dduardo]

Do you see both video and audio in the beginning? If you do then the problem could be that the file is corrupt.

 

[exequor]

Yes, at the beginning you get both video and audio, then at about 20 seconds the video pauses but the audio continues. so, i would agree the video component of the file is corrupt.

I'm going to download "Video Fixer 3.21" and see if that could help me out.
http://www.sharewareplaza.com/Video-Fixer-download_11027.html

Hey dduardo, I don't hear from you in the EE forum, why is that so?

 

[chroot]

If the video stream is damaged, and the file was encoded with no keyframes, then the video is unrecoverable for all times after the damage.

- Warren

 

[gerben]

Perhaps the video is really corrupt, but it may still depend on the player. I have had similar problems when trying to play videofiles in wmp, quicktime, winamp, and others, but often those files would still play fine in MPlayer, I mean this MPlayer:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html