Recovering Corrupted WMV Files

[josepht]

I have downloaded two WMV files from the internet; both are the second part of their respective movies that have been split into two files. With both movies, the first file always plays well. With the second files that contain the second halves of the movies, VLC can never play them. QuickTime with the Flip4Mac plugin can't either, for that matter.

I ran the "recovery" tool Treasured (which, by the way, only gives you an estimate of the probability that it can even be recovered, and then tells you to send the file to them for their not-so-free recovery service), and it says that the file does contain video but that it is of an unknown format.

In VLC, specifically, the file will open and the controller window appears to be processing the file, but then it mysteriously stops. VLC doesn't crash or anything, it's just that the time counter in the controller window will stop and it looks like I never opened the file at all. Though it does appear to be trying to open the file and the counter and frame advancement slider do appear in the controller window, a window for the video never actually opens. No error messages are ever given, either.

How can I go about fixing this problem?

Thanks!

 

[huntercr]

I have downloaded two WMV files from the internet; both are the second part of their respective movies that have been split into two files. With both movies, the first file always plays well. With the second files that contain the second halves of the movies, VLC can never play them. QuickTime with the Flip4Mac plugin can't either, for that matter.

I ran the "recovery" tool Treasured (which, by the way, only gives you an estimate of the probability that it can even be recovered, and then tells you to send the file to them for their not-so-free recovery service), and it says that the file does contain video but that it is of an unknown format.

In VLC, specifically, the file will open and the controller window appears to be processing the file, but then it mysteriously stops. VLC doesn't crash or anything, it's just that the time counter in the controller window will stop and it looks like I never opened the file at all. Though it does appear to be trying to open the file and the counter and frame advancement slider do appear in the controller window, a window for the video never actually opens. No error messages are ever given, either.

How can I go about fixing this problem?

Thanks!

Perhaps the files were split at the file level. There's probably some GUI program you can get to do this, but you can also do this already fromt he commandline.

Put your files on the desktop, then open up a terminal window and type:

cd ~/Desktop
cat part1.wmv part2.wmv > wholething.wmv

( replace part1,part2 with the actual file names and "wholething" with some unique name )

Then open only the new file on VLC and see if it plays.

Hope this helps!

 

[josepht]

That worked for the important one, at least. Thanks a lot!