How can I check the integrity of a video file (avi, mpeg, mp4...)?

Question

This title could be somewhat misleading, so let me explain ...

I'm downloading a video file ... mpeg, avi - being one of the popular formats. Now, if I am downloading it, and the download breaks in the middle of the uhm ... download, then, for example, Windows Media Player will give out some error and refuse to play it (although the file is, let's say, 98% complete). But, players like KMPlayer, or MediaPlayer Classic will play it up until that point (as the matter of fact, they can play it while it is being downloaded as well).

So, I'm interested, ... without using any means of download (download managers and alike) to secure the file is completely downloaded, how can one verify whether the video file is downloaded whole, and that it is complete ?

Answer 1

You can use a feature in ffmpeg video converter: if you will specify it to recode video to nothing it will just read input file and report any errors that will appear. This is very fast process because video frames are just being read, checked and silently dropped.

Example command line: (for Linux)

ffmpeg -v error -i file.avi -f null - 2>error.log

-v error means a certain level of verbosity (to show some errors that are normally hidden because they don't affect playability a much).

You will get a full error log with some generic information about file ffmpeg will output, so this will probably require your attention, through filters can be written to perform batch check of similar files.

FFmpeg is also available for Windows here. The command line will be almost identical with an exception of stderr redirect:

ffmpeg.exe -v error -i file.avi -f null - >error.log 2>&1

Answer 2

I liked idea of using ffmpeg -f null above, but I'd actually like to automate process of using that output. In particular, common scenario I have with my music video collection is that I have few clips which have same resolution, and I'd like to diff verification logs for those files to remove ones broken the most.

Unfortunately, ffmpeg so far doesn't have a way to disable its interactive mode, which outputs noise for this case of usage. I ended up hacking simple wrapper script to do filtering:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import os
import re

t = os.popen('ffmpeg -v 5 -i "%s" -f null - 2>&1' % sys.argv[1]).read()
t = re.sub(r"frame=.+?\r", "", t)
t = re.sub(r"\[(.+?) @ 0x.+?\]", "[\\1]", t)
print t

Example output:

[mpeg1video]ac-tex damaged at 21 17
[mpeg1video]Warning MVs not available
[mpeg1video]concealing 22 DC, 22 AC, 22 MV errors
[mpeg1video]Warning MVs not available
[mpeg1video]concealing 22 DC, 22 AC, 22 MV errors
[mpeg1video]ac-tex damaged at 13 9

Answer 3

For windows, You can 'batch' check integrity for videos on current folder and all subfolders with this bat file:

checkvideo.bat

@echo off

set "filtro=%1"
if [%filtro%]==[] (
    set "filtro=*.mp4"
    )

for /R %%a in (%filtro%) do call :doWork "%%a"

    PAUSE
    exit /B

:doWork
    C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe -v error -i %1 -f null - > "%~1.log" 2>&1

Use:

checkvideo.bat [filter]

If you don't give one filter, will get '*.mp4'.

Samples: checkvideo.bat checkvideo.bat *.avi

Setup: Download FFmpeg for Windows from here: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ and unzip them Change C:\ffmpeg\bin\ in the bat file for the path where you have unzipped ffmpeg Put checkvideo.bat on a folder included in the Path or add his folder to Path environment variable

Answer 4

MediaInfo is a great tool for getting info about any video file you care to throw at it. This may be able to highlight the info you want.

Another tool is GSpot but it hasn't been updated since 2007.

Try giving each one a known good and known bad file and compare the results.

I used to use GSpot until it stopped being updated, then switched to MediaInfo

Answer 5

The issue with the other answer using ffmpeg to recode to null format is that it takes really a long time. Especially, if you want to check multiple files in a directory.

A quick way would be to generate thumbnails for all the videos, and see where thumbnail generation fails.

find . -iname "*.mp4" | while read -r line; do 
  line=`echo "$line" | sed -r 's/^\W+//g'`; 
  echo 'HERE IT IS ==>' "$line"; 
  if ffmpeg -i "$line" -t 2 -r 0.5 %d.jpg; 
    then echo "DONE for" "$line"; 
  else echo "FAILED for" "$line" >>error.log; 
  fi; 
done;

This method turned out to be much FASTER than other methods.

However, there is a CAVEAT. This method can yield wrong results, because sometimes thumbnail can be generated even for corrupt files. E.g. if the video file is corrupted only at the end, this method will fail.

Answer 6

Easier version

for file in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -v error -i "$file" -f null - >error.log 2>&1; print "$file"; done

This will print the file name as they are being processed.

error.log will contain the errors.

Answer 7

fluent-ffmpeg

var ffmpeg = require('fluent-ffmpeg');
var ff = new ffmpeg();

ff.on('start', function(commandLine) {
  // on start, you can verify the command line to be used
})
.on('progress', function(data) {
  // do something with progress data if you like
})
.on('end', function() {
  // do something when complete
})
.on('error', function(err, stdout, stderr) {
  // handle error conditions
  console.log('Error: ' + err.message)
  console.log('ffmpeg output:\n' + stdout)
  console.log('ffmpeg stderr:\n' + stderr)
})
.addInput('path\to\file')
.addInputOption('-xerror')
.addInputOption('-v error')
.output('-')
.outputOptions('-f null')
.run();

Reference:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43349360/how-to-check-for-corrupted-webm-video-using-node-js-and-fluent-ffmpeg