Author Topic: Can't Play Files  (Read 12520 times)

The_Wound_Channel

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Can't Play Files
« on: July 06, 2017, 05:57:47 PM »
I cannot play several of the files from my last outing with the Chronos 1.4, has anyone encountered this and do you know how to repair/recover the .mp4 files?

Some of the files play just fine and I didn't change anything with regards to saving since my last successful trip (memory card, format, etc).

tesla500

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2017, 07:20:26 PM »
Any chance you can upload the failed files somewhere? I'd like to investigate.

I had one report of failed files if you ejected the card too soon after a save completed, did you do anything like that?

Edit: One more question, any idea how long (how many frames) the clip was? ie. how far between mark in and mark out?

You can try recovering the files with the utility recover_mp4. This is a somewhat complex command line utility however. If you sent the files I can try running it on them.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2017, 07:43:55 PM by tesla500 »

The_Wound_Channel

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2017, 08:31:53 AM »
I can email one to you, if you can help that would be amazing since this footage cost me a lot of money to capture and it's very important to me.


I did eject the card soon after saving, I didn't know there was a requirement to leave it in. The camera should still say saving if it's not complete IMO.

The clips are about 2000 frames IIRC.

tesla500

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2017, 05:27:26 PM »
I've added this to the bugtracker so we can fix this bug.

For others who may have this problem, two of the three files were able to be recovered with recover_mp4 from the above link, so give that a try if you're having problems.

nik282000

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2017, 06:46:31 PM »
Awesome! That works on files that 'missed' the mark out point, thanks!

The_Wound_Channel

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2017, 07:05:32 PM »
Thank you again for helping with those!!!!

Taofledermaus

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2017, 11:41:14 PM »
I can email one to you, if you can help that would be amazing since this footage cost me a lot of money to capture and it's very important to me.


I did eject the card soon after saving, I didn't know there was a requirement to leave it in. The camera should still say saving if it's not complete IMO.

The clips are about 2000 frames IIRC.

William,  I have found that if you remove the SD card before you shut down the camera,  the file will not be playable.

nik282000

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #7 on: August 25, 2017, 11:43:33 AM »
Just an update, I have managed to make 1 file that is non-recoverable even with recover_mp4 (which is stupid easy). I had a file that 'missed' the mark out because I was using a USB stick rather than an SD card, when saving it got to the end of the buffer and wrapped around before I noticed. When I did finally stop it the file was ~500mb and the recovered h264 stream was a garbled mess except for the top ~10 rows.

Stick to known working SD cards.

Camoit

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2017, 07:58:51 PM »
It's never a good idea to pull ANY card on a camera that is powered up.
All it takes is stray power to kill the card.
Buy memory for a Red some time. There cards are $800 - $3000 depending on size.

oakwhiz

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #9 on: September 07, 2017, 10:36:38 AM »
Any chance you can upload the failed files somewhere? I'd like to investigate.

I had one report of failed files if you ejected the card too soon after a save completed, did you do anything like that?

Edit: One more question, any idea how long (how many frames) the clip was? ie. how far between mark in and mark out?

You can try recovering the files with the utility recover_mp4. This is a somewhat complex command line utility however. If you sent the files I can try running it on them.

I'd like to add that the same utility helped me recover a file that was corrupted by a discharged battery. If the Chronos experiences a power failure during encoding, the MOOV atom is not written to the end of the file. This utility is able to rebuild a new MP4 file with a correct MOOV atom.

John Delonghi

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Re: Can't Play Files
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2017, 11:00:01 AM »
I have had a few occasions where I've properly set the mark in and mark out point for a clip, then gone on to save a few more clips. Then I've used the eject SD card utility in the camera and put the SD card in a PC to copy off the files, but found that one of the clips has a filesize of 1KB and won't play. It's not always the last clip to be saved, so I don't think it has anything to do with not powering off before removing the SD card.

As I've only been running tests so far, it's no big deal but it would be useful to know if a clip has saved successfully on the card or not before flushing the buffer.

Could we have an on-screen message immediately after saving telling us the name, filesize and duration (at saved frame rate) of the file saved?