Tools to check if MP4/AVI is playing correctly?

Question

I have downloaded lots of video stuffs (I mean ALOT), but when I tried to review some of them, some parts are not playable (sometimes portions of the file, and sometimes the whole file itself).

Is there a tool where I could check the integrity of the video files, rather than re-watching all of them all over again?

Answer 1

If the file's index is corrupt it might be possible to detect it, but this would depend on the format and exact nature of corruption.

VirtualDubMod can detect bad headers and corrupt frames. If you have the appropriate video codecs (such as Xvid, DivX etc.) installed, load the AVI into VDM and use the Video / Scan video stream for errors / Scan option.

You can also try video repair utilities such as DivFix++, DivXRepair, AVIMaster and so on.

Answer 2

Where the download site has a hash of the files, this can be done by calculating the hash of the file you have and comparing with the original. This ensures your version is exactly the same as the one available for download.

Other than that, you really are stuck with trying to run a video playback. You don't necessarily need to watch it, but instead log all errors in playback (if your player logs errors)

Often corrupt files or fragments are inserted by organisations like the MPAA and RIAA in order to dissuade movie piracy by increasing the amount of failed downloads, and this is likely to keep increasing as they feel that annoying the end user enough will persuade more people to buy films rather than copy.