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Damaged files from bad SDI cable
I made some recordings on my AJA KiPro Mini but, due to the SDI cable from the camera to the recorder getting yanked about, many of the clips are damaged in certain spots. The recorder was close but, at the end of a long SDI cable and moving about caused the signal to ‘break’ every so often. The Ki Pro kept recording but, where these ‘breaks’ are, the footage won’t play.
For instance, I can play the clips in Quicktime for X amount of time until the playhead gets to a spot where the break occurred. When QT gets to that spot, it hesitates, sometime for many seconds, the beach ball starts and then QT crashes. Sometimes even the computer will crash.
From watching the playback (and the frame counter) up to the point of the inevitable crash on many of the clips, I’ve determined, on some, where I think it’s about to ‘break’, stop playback and write out a new clip from this undamaged segment. That actually works but, it’s pretty time-consuming. Of course, I can’t actually see these breaks until QT gets to them but, by then (that is, if I don’t stop playback in time) it’s too late. Crash!
The clips play just fine up to the point of signal loss and even after that point, if you know where to ‘jump’ over it but, if QT or FCP hits that spot of damage, the whole thing crashes.
Maybe I should just ask my question now…
Does anyone know of software that can analyze a clip, detect damage of this type and isolate it so that it can be removed? Or, perhaps, mark it so that, new clips can be generated from the undamaged parts.
Thanks and my apologies for that long, unwieldly explanation.
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2 Replies
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I was googling other issues and I came across this message.
If you can extract your file to your computer … as a last-ditch effort you can try opening the file in a hex editor. Scroll through the file and look for patterns of anomalies such as a large string of zeroes where you presume are breaks in the file. Delete those zeroes in the file and save as a new file. Hopefully your media player then can play through the footage without hanging up the computer.
Good luck.
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Thank you, Joseph! Great idea. Something I would not have thought of. Although, I’m somewhat averse to looking at long strings of code, that may be the only way. To this point, anyway, no one has suggested anything better.
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