Hi,

I did a rather lengthy session last night and was disappointed to find later that my video files were corrupted. The curious thing is that the video was not so corrupted that I couldn't play it in Media Player Classic or Virtual Dub.

I don't recall the exact error I got (I'll find out tonight,) but it was to the effect that the codec wasn't installed. The codec in question is the PS3 camera codec (Bayer?), which of course is installed.

As a fix, I tried resaving the video out of MPC and VDub.

For my calibration video, the MPC file seemed mostly okay after resaving. The only issue I had was that I had to redefine the dimensions to 640 x 480 in the Bayer loading dialog, which seems to indicate that it was just the header data that got corrupted. I did not have the same luck with the performance video, but I think the problem is I need to use the x64 bit version of MPC because the video kept getting truncated at around 2GB. I'm resaving the file from the x64 version now, and so far it seems to be doing the entire video.

I had the same issue with VDub (using direct stream copy,) which couldn't handle the bigger file at all, but I just downloaded the x64 version and will give that a try next.

Has anybody else run into this problem? It happened to me once before several months ago but I don't know what caused it. I thought back then that maybe it was a hiccup with my eSATA mini-RAID, which might still be the case but I don't know for sure yet. To fix the problem back then, I think I used VDub, but my file size must have been smaller so I didn't have the truncation problem.

I'll follow this up after the file is done resaving from MPC x64. (It's a big file so it's taking a while.)

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Oh, I forgot to mention: When I open the files in VDub I get the message "Reconstructing missing index block" or something close to that.

BTW, the resaved MPC x64 files didn't work; I'm getting the missing codec error.

Trying again with VDub x64 now.

Edit: the VDub x64 calibration video is working in DMC, but I had to define dimensions in the loader again (no big deal.) I'm resaving the performance video now.

Edit 2: VDub x64 only did 2GB of the performance video. Ugh!

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Okay, I think the problem is that the corruption in the performance video goes much deeper than just the header. When I opened the file in MPC x64 and scrubbed to the end, the video is cut off at about 2GB of data, even though the filesize is many times larger than that. I'll try recording another session tonight; maybe try a different eSATA drive too.

It's strange because I have captured sessions much longer than 2GB in the past that was useable in DMC, including the video for my previous test.

I'll post more info after I do the next test tonight.

Edit: I should have clarified that the VDub resave of the performance video does load in DMC; it's just shorter than what it should be.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Greenlaw, what version of iPiRecorder you have used? The thing is that old versions do not support AVI files larger than 2 GB, but the last one does. And one more question: version of Windows Media Player?

Edit: and more questions - 1) Was compression turned on? 2) Was recording stopped normally by pressing Stop button or due to some error (buffer overflow, not enough disk space,...)?

Edit 2: 3) What is the length of original video files? (we need exact value in bytes!)

Thank you!

One note about :

iPiRecorder does not write any special header data to AVI file in case of Bayer video layout pattern - it just adds "_RAW" postfix to the video file name. iPiStudio in turn uses the presence of "_RAW" postfix to auto detect Bayer video layout. It seems that after resaving video from MPC or VDub this postfix was removed from file name. Thus if you add postfix "_RAW" to the result file name then iPiStudio should load video correctly without need to change video layout settings in dialog.

I have the latest iPi Recorder installed. It seemed to save my first session files just fine, some of which I'm sure was over 2GB, but corrupted my session files.

I'm using the latest Media Player Classic x64 (1.3.1249.0) from Sourceforge. I'll check which Windows Media Player I have installed but I don't generally use that.



I'm almost certain compression was off. Recording was stopped normally by pressing the Stop button for both the calibration and performance clips. The calibration clip is under 2GB; the performance clip is 37,261,724 KB.



Good to know! I'm sure this answers the import question I had. :)

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Greenlaw, was calibration video also corrupted? If yes, it is very-very strange problem!

As to performance video: we haven't produced any experiments with such large video files. Right now we have written appropriate test case and are waiting for results...

About version of Windows Media Player: the thing is that iPiStudio plays video file via Windows Media Player (under hood), thus it makes sense to know its version :)

In any case sorry for data lost!

Andrew,

Thanks for the quick response. I'll try to do another session tonight and make sure I have the latest Windows Media Player installed, and also try to document as much as possible.

Regarding my calibration video, yes, this was corrupted too. When I resaved it from MPC, it played fine in iPi DMC. (I think the same was true with a version saved from VDub. Unlike MPC, VDub reported that it needed to reconstruct a missing index block during import.) I did change the file name when resaving the clip and left off the _RAW tag.

I just restored the _RAW tag in the filename and now I get the proper size preset in iPi DMC. :)

As for the really big file, this was unusual for me too. I guess I got lazy and decided to just let it run. I'll try to work in smaller segments for tonight's session.

BTW, I still think a separate loader for a clean plate clip would be very helpful. I'd like to be able to set it and forget it, as not every clip from the same session will have the clean plate frames in the same frame range.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Then it is possible that problem is in RAID controller. Try to check your external RAID storage by check disk tool with sector checking. To run right click on disk letter in widows explorer, go to Properties menu item, press button "Check disk", turn on all option in dialog. Such check can take several hours...

I have the RAID with me right now, and will give that a try. This might mean I can't use it tonight, but in the meantime I can try using a regular eSATA external drive and see how that goes.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!