Any way to repair/remux WTV files?

[SolarWindSurfer]

I've run into a problem where I have a few WTV recordings that appear to have been corrupted after copying to a USB drive (2TB MyBook).

When MC attempts to play the files, playback reaches a point in the file and memory usage rapidly increases until the system becomes unresponsive. It's not a hard crash since the system will eventually recover after several minutes, but in the meantime all activity (even network) is nearly completely locked up.

I've been able to observe the following points:
* The files affected will fail at the same place in that file, but not at the same place in different files. (i.e. it's not always X minutes into the recording).
* If I skip over the affected point, playback can continue (so there is good data after the bad point, but I would have to anticipate that, and there is no guarantee there isn't another bad spot)
* There was no DRM flag on the files, my cable provider doesn't routinely set the flag.
* The built-in Windows 7 Convert to DVR-MS will fail a the same point (although without the hard memory lockup)
* I've tried MCEBuddy and Handbrake, and they will fail at the same point in the files (although without the hard memory lockup). I'm guessing that anything based on ffmpeg will fail.

So, given all this, is there any software that might be able to extract the stream to another format, or locate the bad data and re-encode so that MC will play through it?

Thanks for any help.

[foxwood]

VideoRedo might be worth a try in this case - it costs $100, but they have a free trial available. It had support for WTV long before it was added to the ffmpeg libraries, so it might be able to work around whatever the problem is.

By the way, have you tried playing the recordings on another machine, to verify that it really is a problem with the recording?

[SolarWindSurfer]

Thanks for the help, Foxwood. I'll check out Video Redo.

The files fail on a second Win 7 machine as well, same way and at the same point.

The idea was to have the external drive as an archive zone to free up space on the primary drive, but still in the library so that MC can see it. I copied a batch of WTV files over and didn't think to keep the originals around. Most of the batch is replaceable, but there's a couple recordings that I wouldn't mind recovering.

Going forward, I'm going to have to see what I can do to validate the files to see if the copy to the USB drive is what caused the corruption. Probably doing test batch copies and validating the hashes. Fortunately I'm not at a critical space situation so I have some time and room to test things out.

Thanks again.

[sparkinstx]

has anyone else been able to fix corrupt .wtv files? I have a couple of them, and I'd like to be able to repair them. I installed the trial version version of VideoReDo TVSuite (the full version is currently $95.99), but I don't see any information there on how to repair a corrupt file, and nothing in their forums. I also found this Microsoft link:

WTV file corrupted after PC crashed while recording a show in WMC, how to fix the corrupted WTV file
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 6c3bf61436

The article refers to ISBE2FileScan, but it's about as far from being user-friendly as can be.

Anyway, any suggestions or ideas are welcome.

[wipster]

Have you tried opening them with VLC? I do the same thing, keep the files on other hard drives, load on USB drives, and even open them over my wired and wireless networks using VLC. Bear in mind this does not involve WMC at all (except for the actual recording of course), but all of my files, even HBO and Showtime play fine in VLC. In fact, I use VLC for almost all of my audio and video files, have for some time, and since it's free you can't beat the price!

Best of luck mate!

[sparkinstx]

Thanks, I have VLC on my Windows 10 systems, so I can watch wtv recordings. Unfortunately, it won't play it, either. It just sits on 00:00, and won't play.

Some posts I've seen make it sound easy to scan and repair a wtv file, but it's a mystery to me.

[marvin-miller]

Use VideoRedo to run a QSF on the file

[sparkinstx]

Use VideoRedo to run a QSF on the file

That's easy to say, but how do you run a QSF? Step-by-step instructions, please?

[marvin-miller]

Its easier then you think. Open the file in Video Redo and then pull down the menus on the top left until you see an option called, something like, Quick Stream Fix or QSF.

It will then ask you for a save location and just put something different in there and let it run.

If you want step by step instructions ask someone that's being PAID to explain to you. Perhaps Video Redo ??

[sparkinstx]

Its easier then you think. Open the file in Video Redo and then pull down the menus on the top left until you see an option called, something like, Quick Stream Fix or QSF.

It will then ask you for a save location and just put something different in there and let it run.

If you want step by step instructions ask someone that's being PAID to explain to you. Perhaps Video Redo ??

The file must be really hosed, because I was getting an error when I tried to open it (VideoReDo wouldn't open the file). I'll take a look at it again tonight. Thanks.

[marvin-miller]

If VR won't open it then I'm not aware of any other way to fix it. That's not to say there isn't, I'm just not aware of any