A whole directory full of video files now will not play when they did a few weeks ago..

[Fumesucker]

My box is running WinXP Pro SP3, I have a whole directory full of movies in mostly AVI format that won't play or convert now for some reason, even when I drag them to another disk drive they won't play. There are other movies on the same disk drive in other directories that will play or convert with no issues at all.

The files are recognized by my player and when I click on properties they show the correct number of bytes and so forth.

Any ideas?

[canetoad]

1. Coupla suggestions

Run chkdsk; Right click the appropriate drive, Properties/Tools/Check volume for errors. Reboot and have a beer or 10 while it runs and repairs errors. Type chkdsk into 'Help' for more info and commands.

Download the K-lite mega codec pack and see if it makes any difference.

[Fumesucker]

4. I tried chkdsk, nothing changed and it didn't find any errors..

And I'm using VLC player which would play the very same files a while back and plays other files of the same sort in different directories just fine..

This is beyond my usual experience..

Sorry about not getting back sooner, it wasn't really a priority to play this stuff and it slipped my mind after my post fell off my latest posts page..

Thanks for your suggestions..

[Occulus]

2. Sounds like a codec issue

Have you tried downloading the vlc player? It comes with its own codecs, I believe.

[Fumesucker]

3. I'm already using VLC, it's a great player one of the few that will play damn near anything..

But thanks for the suggestion..

[canetoad]

5. Ain't it just!

Is there any kind of error message? VLC will do it's best to repair corrupt/broken files.

This is clutching at straws, but I'd really like to know the outcome of this as I would hate to lose any of my folders of movies. Go to http://www.roadkil.net/ and download Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier (freebie) and see if you can copy/repair the files to another location. The program will attempt to recover broken files.

If chkdsk has found no errors, maybe it's a wong assumption that the folder is corrup. Have you tried playing them in Media Player Classic (available as standalone, or bundled with K-Lite Codecs). You could also try loading the files, and I'm assuming they are .avi, into VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org/

[Fumesucker]

6. Already tried Unstoppable Copier..

Haven't tried VirtualDub yet, I'll give that a shot..

Have you ever seen Deshaker, a plugin for VirtualDub?

It is basically a software "Steadicam" that can stabilize shaky video after the fact, it's astounding effective if you take the time to tweak the myriad settings it has and it works pretty damn well at the default settings.

http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

Here's a demo video I did a couple of years ago, first half is raw video, second half is the exact same video but stabilized with Deshaker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn_RlsVQeTU

[canetoad]

7. That's an amazing difference

And I've grabbed Deshaker. I don't make many videos and use one of those little Kodak Zx1 compacts on the fly. It has a huge problem with camera shake so this will be very handy.