Freaky Weird *.avi Problems. Here's a challenge for you smart ones!!

chriselkins wrote on 4/18/2002, 10:49 AM
I’ve been trying to solve a friend's VF1 issues for weeks now. I can't figure it out. I will try to list the facts and be as brief as possible.

1. VF1 worked fine this time last year doing similar project capturing analogue video.
2. She got DV cam mid year this year with DV capture card. It worked fine and caused no problems. It worked side by side with analogue capturing. No problems.
[--> At this point she added an 80G drive and transferred all of her video files to it.<--]
3. Two problems suddenly appeared at the same time. One, she could not enter more than 75 events and two, some of her video was no longer showing up in the timeline, i.e., the edit events and envelopes were there, but there was no video inside and playing from the timeline yielded a blank screen. VF was redirected to the new locations of the files.
4. It was suggested to upgrade to VF2 to solve 75 event prob. I did so, hoping it would fix the other prob too. No good.
5. I have noticed that even outside of VF1 or 2, the windows media player does not recognize the video type and tries to open the files as if they were music files. However, if I right click the file and go to properties, preview, the video file WILL preview like a regular video. (!!?)
6. I have done the obvious checking for correct file associations, upgraded video for windows, reinstalled legacy video for windows, updated windows media player, updated every possible upgrade from Microsoft and Sonic Foundry regarding video, active X and windows media, made sure I had the latest aviplug.dll and even tried to convert the files using the suggested Canopus conversion program. No Good!

7. Nothing will open these video files normally EXEPT for the ATI video editing program that came with the All-In-Wonder card, HOWEVER, if I try to re-save a file once opened with the ATI editor, it fails with a message of: "Rmanager, an unnamed file was not found." This happens even when trying to save full frames uncompressed.


8. The files that windows is now having problems recognizing are all analogue captured files. They once worked fine. The problem is, the contributors have all taken the tapes back and there is no chance of recapturing the video. This is for an "end of the year" show for an elementary school. If she cannot get windows to recognize these files normally, she will be missing the first half of the school year.

Does anyone out there have a clue what I can do to fix this?


(Again....the files are NOT trashed, because you can right click and view the preview and it plays fine!)

Thanks!
Chris


Comments

randy-stewart wrote on 4/18/2002, 11:58 AM
Chris,
You're right, this one is strange. I suspect it has to do with the source file itself (duh!) so, to trouble shoot, let's try a simple fix. Try resaving the file under a different name (take note of the file extension and location), then reimport it into your video library. If it shows up, try placing it on the time line. From what you have provided, it sounds like some part of the file identity has been changed which prevents VF from recognizing it. By resaving under a new name and reimporting, VF may be able to find it again. Of course, it could be that the file format has been changed somehow into one not recognized by VF. If that's the case, it may be necessary to try and recreate the files from the source again. This is frustrating I'm sure. Hope this shot in the dark works.
Randy
Stiffler wrote on 4/18/2002, 12:05 PM
""some of her video was no longer showing up in the timeline, i.e., the edit events and envelopes were there, but there was no video inside and playing from the timeline yielded a blank screen.""

I had the same results with Vegas and one of my analog captured files. This only happened after I moved (copied) the .avi to my new HD. It seems my file got corrupted during the transfer??

I was able to recapture, so it was not a big deal.

Jon
chriselkins wrote on 4/18/2002, 1:02 PM
Stewert, I tried what you siad, but it won't re-write the file. It gives that Rmanager error message.
Stiffler, BINGO! She DID recently have a new drive installed and transferred all of her video to it. Why on earth would that screw up the files? Stranger still, ONLY the ones that were captured analogue were messed up, not the DV. I wonder if her husband formatted the new drive incorrectly for her. That gives me something new to go on.

Thanks!
HeeHee wrote on 4/18/2002, 1:35 PM
What version of ATI MMC is she running? Was it captured uncompressed or was a codec used to compress it? If a codec was used, is that codec still on the system? If it isn't, then you may not be able to play it correctly.
chriselkins wrote on 4/18/2002, 3:27 PM
She has not taken any codec off of the system. It was working, then it stopped. This all coincided with moving the files from the original "C" drive, where the OS is, to a newly installed "D" drive, dedicated for video. I can't get to all the other details you asked for right now. It was captured compressed, using ATI's VCR 2 setting. Do you think I should try re-installing the ATI capture software? It's probably worth a try, I 'spose.
Stiffler wrote on 4/19/2002, 1:45 AM
Wow, I'm glad I posted (your problem looked familiar). All my files seemed to copy fine to my new drive (from C to D), except the one that was analog. Hmmm, something for SF to look into, or try to reproduce?

Jon
chriselkins wrote on 4/19/2002, 7:57 AM
Jon-
Definitely! I sent an e-mail to support and asked them to take a look at this thread and post a response. That's a real problem when you can't move your analogue files to a bigger drive. I hope there is something I can do to help this lady recover them in her project. I feel bad because they paid me to consult, and now I can't fix her problem! Had she asked if there was harm in moving files from one to another I would have said certainly not.
SonicNateM2 wrote on 4/19/2002, 9:24 AM
chriselkins wrote:
She has not taken any codec off of the system. It was working, then it stopped. This all coincided with moving the files from the original "C" drive, where the OS is, to a newly installed "D" drive, dedicated for video. I can't get to all the other details you asked for right now. It was captured compressed, using ATI's VCR 2 setting. Do you think I should try re-installing the ATI capture software? It's probably worth a try, I 'spose.

You say that the video was captured with the VCR2 codec? I'm assuming that you have installed the ATI capture software (including the VCR 1 & 2 codecs) onto the new hard drive, correct? Does the video play without a problem in Windows Media Player? Removing and reinstalling the ATI software to make sure that the ATI codecs are properly registered is important here.

You might want to try downloading VirtualDub to see if it can open and display the files, simply because it uses DirectShow codecs the same way the VideoFactory does, and will let you know if they are installed properly. It can be downloaded from:

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub

Another useful thing about VirtualDub, is that you can set both the video and audio settings to "Direct Stream Copy" and use it to duplicate/validate potentially broken AVI files. It will do a direct frame-by-frame rewrite of the entire AVI file, rebuilding the index at the end from scratch and all. Great for those glitchy captures, or potentially truncated files.
chriselkins wrote on 4/19/2002, 11:01 AM
<--"I'm assuming that you have installed the ATI capture software (including the VCR 1 & 2 codecs) onto the new hard drive, correct?"

--> No. There are no system files on the new drive. It is dedicated for storage of video only. The system files remain on the original drive.


<--Does the video play without a problem in Windows Media Player?

--> No. This is explained in detail in my original post at the beginning of this thread.

<--Removing and reinstalling the ATI software to make sure that the ATI codecs are properly registered is important here.

--> That's what I was going to try next. Thanks for the referance to virtual dub also! It sounds like that just might work. I'll keep you posted.

chriselkins wrote on 4/19/2002, 11:05 PM
<--Removing and reinstalling the ATI software to make sure that the ATI codecs are properly registered is important here.

Did that. No good.
HeeHee wrote on 4/20/2002, 12:19 AM
I think I am on to something here. I have an ATI All-in-Wonder, but have never tried the VCR compression codecs before because I always use uncompressed avi to obtain the highest possible quality. When you stated that the ATI VCR 2 setting was used to capture video, I thought that this may be part of the problem. I remebered seeing these settings in past versions of ATI MMC, but I have updated to v7.6 since then and I think they dropped the VCR 2 settings. What I see now are several ATI VCR settings only, but a couple have settings for MPEG-2 and MPEG-1. All of these settings create the file with a *.vcr extenison. So, I tried experimenting with them tonight and found that the *.vcr file it created did not work in Windows Media Player, Video Factory 2.0b or Vegas Video 3.0a. WMP only displayed black video, but played the audio. VF and VV played the audio as well, but the video was green. ATIs media player worked fine.

My question to you is whether you are able to open them using the media player that comes with the ATI software? I think this codec is only available for ATI programs. If you are able to do this, you may be able to save your work by playing it in full screen and directing the output to a VCR or Camcorder thru the ATI card and recording it. Then capture it back using an uncompressed avi format.

However, in your original subject you listed that you were having an *.avi problem. Are you sure the ATI VCR 2 codec was used???

johnmeyer wrote on 4/20/2002, 1:22 AM
How big are these files? I've run into copying problems with Win98SE when copying across a network. Anything above 2 gigabytes caused a problem. I think I also remember problems with 1 gigabyte. There is an article in the MS Knowledgebase that covers this, "Windows 98 Explorer Cannot Copy Large Files":

http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q318293

According to this article, there can be a problem copying between disk drives as well.

John