How can I check video integrity?

[steve62388]

Hi,

I have done some internet search on this but everything I came up with was outdated or rather vague. I'm hoping someone here can provide some help.

I have a range of video files, mostly FLVs and MP4s with some AVIs and WMVs thrown in. Some of these files are corrupt. For example when played the video and audio will freeze frame for seconds at a time and then skip forward to carry on playing.

I want a way to identify these files, I would very much prefer something under OS X. MediaInfo (for OS X) doesn't produce any useful information. I have also tried GSPot and FLVCheck under Windows and they both report that everything is okay with a file when I know it's corrupt after watching it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[joema2]

Hi,

I have done some internet search on this but everything I came up with was outdated or rather vague. I'm hoping someone here can provide some help.

I have a range of video files, mostly FLVs and MP4s with some AVIs and WMVs thrown in. Some of these files are corrupt. For example when played the video and audio will freeze frame for seconds at a time and then skip forward to carry on playing.

I want a way to identify these files, I would very much prefer something under OS X. MediaInfo (for OS X) doesn't produce any useful information. I have also tried GSPot and FLVCheck under Windows and they both report that everything is okay with a file when I know it's corrupt after watching it.

Thanks in advance.

This is a good question. The internal structure of each file is different, so the checking algorithm and repair (if possible) would also be different for each. I have seen Stellar Phoenix Video Repair advertised but I haven't tried it. It is a Mac app but I don't think will do FLV: http://www.stellarphoenixrecovery.com/software-repair-mov.php

I have also seen discussion about using the ffprobe command-line utility to try and validate video files. I don't know how well that works: https://ffmpeg.org/ffprobe.html

 

[steve62388]

Thanks very much for your reply. I have made some progress forward but am stuck again.

I have downloaded ffmpeg and I think I have a handle on how to use it to scan for errors. I am using this command:-

./ffmpeg –v error –i input.mkv –f null -

What I would ideally like to do is manipulate this somehow so it automatically scans all files in a folder and subfolders, and then outputs the results to a file I can read later. My knowledge of the Terminal is woeful and at the moment I can only use this to check one file at a time which will take ages.

 

[joema2]

Thanks very much for your reply. I have made some progress forward but am stuck again.

I have downloaded ffmpeg and I think I have a handle on how to use it to scan for errors. I am using this command:-

./ffmpeg –v error –i input.mkv –f null -

What I would ideally like to do is manipulate this somehow so it automatically scans all files in a folder and subfolders, and then outputs the results to a file I can read later. My knowledge of the Terminal is woeful and at the moment I can only use this to check one file at a time which will take ages.

If you look around you might find someone who has posted a shell script for this. I vaguely recollect seeing something like that.

 

[DavidDoyle]

Here's one option : http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/25921/how-can-i-run-a-specific-command-for-each-find-result

So it looks like you'd do a command something like:

find -iname '*.mkv' -exec ./ffmpeg –v error –i {} –f null - \;

Which should then recurse your folder structure and run the ffmpeg command for each file where filename matches *.mkv

I don't have ffmpeg so may take some manipulating to get to work correctly.

 

[ColdCase]

There may be a service. Those that ripped an entire collection of DVDs created services that would cycle through a folder and transcode, perhaps there is one that cycles through and would do something else. I dunno.

 

[kumquat]

I have a range of video files, mostly FLVs and MP4s with some AVIs and WMVs thrown in. Some of these files are corrupt...
I want a way to identify these files.

Did you ever find a solution to this?

 

[steve62388]

Did you ever find a solution to this?

No, I never got any further than what you see here.