I have a corrupt quicktime camera file. I think its something as simple as it didn't get the end of file marker. It was recorded on a Contour camera that hit the end of the memory card. I can open the file and play about 75% of it through VLC (the end of the file crashes VLC), but no quicktime or other related programs I have will even try to open the file.
Mac Core 2 Duo 2.33 Laptop, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Studio 3
I have a corrupt quicktime camera file. I think its something as simple as it didn't get the end of file marker. It was recorded on a Contour camera that hit the end of the memory card.
You are probably correct here in that it sounds like the file was not properly terminated when you hit the end of available memory which normally prevents opening of the file in any QT based application.
I can open the file and play about 75% of it through VLC (the end of the file crashes VLC), but no quicktime or other related programs I have will even try to open the file.
Since you indicated the file opens and plays partially in VLC, here is what I would try:
1) Open the file normally in VLC. Select the "Streaming/Exporting Wizard" File menu option.
2) Activate the "Transcode/Save to file" option in the first window and press the "Next" button.
3) Activate "Existing Playlist Item" option, select the file you just opened, enable the "Partial Extract" option, enter your approiximate start and end points in seconds (believe the app actually uses the nearest key frame) of playable content (i.e., content available before VLC crashes), and press the "Next" button.
4) Pres the "Next" button in the "Transcode" window since your are not transcoding the original data.
5) Select the the output file type into which to encapsulate the data and press the "Next" button.
6) Press the "Choose..." button to enter target filename and select a destination for your target file. When finished, close the window by pressing the "Save" button and press the "Next" button in the main Wizard window.
7) Press the "Finish" button in the last Wizard window to create your new file.
If all goes well, the newly created file container will be properly terminated and playable normally. Since I have not run into the problem myself, I do not have a test file on which to try this work flow so I do not know how difficult it will be for you to enter a reasonable "end point" to prevent VLC from crashing. I have, however, used this approach on other files to successfully convert transport stream (TS) content to program stream (PS) content for QT compatibility.
Thank you. It seems to be working, I probably asked it to do too much--it is a large file that appears to be processing slowly. You know, I've had VLC on computers forever, but I would have never been inclined to explore a strangely worded feature like that . . . without your guidance. Well in the time I wrote this it seems to have stopped working. I'm going to try smaller, more specific chunks.
VLC and MPEG Streamclip are solid tools we use every day, a tricky corrupt file was confounding both of these utilities so we found this one and bingo:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Video-Repair-Tool
as of 7/20/12 the name and version: Video Repair Tool 1.7.5.1
Also used http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec to recover the files from the corrupted SD card that wouldn't mount.
Good luck!
quicktime repair
