My recorded footage without sound will not play, but will when recorded with sound, any ideas?

I am at a loss, and I really need this footage for a project. Any ideas?

Post a sample copy for analysis. Sounds like at least one of the unspecified players you tried expects the video to be in a QT file container (MOV). Normally I would recommend copying the data to an MOV file container using QT 7 Pro, MPEG Streamclip, or VLC but once again the assumption is that these players would likely be included in the "will not play in any player, even when Perian is installed" statement.

It won't let me post the video in the forum, so here is a link to it in dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k4nz8mg18p4thzd/Mountain%203.AVI?n=145237283

Accessed the file at dropbox. Played the DropBox "display" file in scripted player, played the same resource file using the Safari plug-in, and then downloaded the resource file using the QT 7 Pro "Open URL" option only to learn that this file was an H.264 transcode and not your original file. Used the DropBox download option to download the original Motion JPEG file in AVI file container. File plays as is in both QT X v10.2 and QT 7 v7.6.6 players under Mountain Lion v10.8.4 on my system.

Motion JPEG is one of the "lagacy" codec components turned off under Lion and which remains turned off under Mountain Lion. However, as I understand it, Motion JPEG files are supposed to be passively supported (playback supported) under these systems but requires the codec to be turned back on if you wish to export files using this codec. I turned both Motion JPEG and Motion PNG codecs back on quite a while back and have Perian installed which, as you can see, supplied the OpenDML version of the Motion JPEG codec component to actually play your file on my system. Unfortunately, since QT uses a LIFO codec component list generation strategy, I would have to remove Perian to test whether or not the system configured Motion JPEG component would then become the active decoder. (Did this a year or two ago but not willing to do so again at this time.)

Suffice it to say, the file should play in QT on your Mountain Lion system assuming the correct version of Perian is installed, it is actually active, and you have no conflicting software or hardware installed on your system. Have posted an MOV file containing your Motion JPEG video data in case you want to see if it will play correctly on your system.

http://downloads.walker4.me/downloads/Temporary_files/Mountain%203.mov

ADDED:

Tried to edit previous post with additional comments yesterday but got caught by an Apple server backup which took me beyond the timeout limit for posting edits. In any case, here are the added comments...

I also tested the AVI file in VLC which played the video correctly. The "undf" message refers to there being no audio in the file. Audio-Video Interleaf (AVI) files employ spatial synchronization of the audio and video content. You can think of it as working like a watch in that if the mainspring gear wheel changes speed, then it also changes the speed up the second, minute, and hour gear wheels with which it is meshed. If you read the message log you will see references to "nothing to play" and "dead input" just before the error message is issued. That is, the VLC player could not find any audio to play so it told you the audio was "undf" (undefined or unidentified). On the other hand, when I play the MOV version of the file, VLC did not issue any error message since QT employs temporal synchronization of data. (You can think of it as each data track in the file being played back by a separate playhead each of which is scale-synchronized to an external "clock signal.") In any event, that is why I am interested in learning if the MOV file version will play on your system as it is currently configured.

upon looking into my circumstance, i did read about the MJPEG not being automatic in Mountain Lion and had turned it on manually in terminal a number of days ago. My perian is also up to date. Yet still it will not be recognised in any program. Not sure if anything is conflicting with it, as I am new to video editing, my background is in audio. The .mov file you supplied seems to work perfectly however in all programs and is more or less the same file size which is nice.

I have to still say that the formatting of the .AVI is still strange. Proof of this is that I tried uploading to both youtube and vimeo, but i got errors for both. AVI should work in both situations. But this is different territory all together i suppose.

Based on your playback results for the MOV file version, my guess is that there are at least two issues present on your system—one is the file type problem and the other is either a hardware or configuration problem. Since the AVI files with audio and the audio-free MOV file both play correctly, we can conclude that you have a working MJPEG codec component that can do its job correctly when "allowed" to do so.

Official support for the "legacy" AVI file type was dropped by Microsoft following release of its more modern WMV compression/file type products about 11 years ago. If you read the Wiki article on the AVI file type, you will learn about some of the shortcomings of this file format. You seem to have uncovered an additional issue in that when the interleaved file format does not contain actual interleaved data, the file may fail to play under certain conditions. What those conditions actually are I cannot say at this point. It could be anything from have a Retina display to the possibility of a a software conflict as previously mentioned. At this point all I can say is that the AVI will play on my system but not yours. Finding out why could be a long and arduous process that usually starts with the creation of a pristine start-up drive containing on the basic system apps and running it on a system with all non-essential peripherials remove and testing playpaback. If the AVI file then plays on the "base" system configuration, you then start the process of adding applications and peripherials until such time as you discover a combination that againg prevents the AVI files from playing properly. I assume this is something you would want to avoid if at all prossible.

Im thinking instead of doing further troubleshooting, it may be easier to convert to .mov if you can perhaps provide me the appropriate settings.

Not conversion (in the sense of a transcoding of data) was performed. Basically, all I did was copy your AVI data from the AVI file container and store it in a new MOV file container. In QT 7 Pro, this is a simple "Save As..." file option. Since you say you do not have QT 7 Pro, do you have MPEG Streamclip installed. This free application provides nearly allo of the save and conversions options found in QT 7 Pro (i.e., no compositing features) using the same QT system routines accessed by QT 7 Pro but without having to purchase a key. One of those features is the "Save As..." file menu option. An since the file employs the older 32-bit routines which may mean the AVI file may open natively in the application. In any case, you may wish to give this work flow a try.