So I got this video here:
http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/temp/vidvid/2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf
It has a friend:
http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/temp/vidvid/2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.tbl
I installed the whole triumvirate of codecs including the naughties – gstreamer-plugins-good, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-ugly. I also installed mplayer and vlc. Mplayer and VLC can play it. Gstreamer can’t. It says it’s DIVX. :-/ any ideas?
Did you also gstreamer-ffmpeg?
Try gstreamer-ffmpeg ?
The AVF file seems to be some kind of modified RIFF/AVI. I've filed http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593117 for this, patch will follow…
VLC 0.9.4 plays it here without problems (says it's a DIVX).
GXine wouldn't play it either, but I confirmed vlc on my computer would.
Install ghex and convert the first 4 bytes to RIFF (ascii)… It'll work… dead serious. http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/converting…
Probably should be a bug for gstreamer.
Uh, sorry. It's early in the morning and after posting my comment I realized I told you something you already know (Mplayer and VLC "CAN" play it).
It's all good! thanks for the quick reply and for trying 🙂
I guess GStreamer does not understand the *container*, so is not about the codecs. The video coded may be DIVX, and GStreamer pugins may understand that codec, but is no help if the player can't open the container.
ffplay 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf
weird it's 720×240
ffmpeg -i 009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf out.avi
You can recode to an xvid that totem can play with:
mencoder -o 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts fixed_quant=1 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf
Adjusting the fixed_quant value up will reduce the quality and size of the output.
As I said, is not about the coded, so you don't need to re-encode, changing the container is enough (and very fast):
mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -o 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avi 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf
If you go for re-encoding, you can use as well Ogg Theora:
ffmpeg2theora 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf
Thanks!! This will come in very useful while I try to work with these files in the meantime the gstreamer patch lands in Fedora 🙂
Try installing gstreamer-ffmpeg!
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593117 has patches to make it possible to play this file with GStreamer now. Alternatively you could simply exchange the first 4 bytes that are AVF0 now with RIFF
You rock! Thanks so much!!!!
Just a followup… If you prefer Ogg Theora, you can use ffmpeg2theora (install the package by the same name if you don't have it):
ffmpeg2theora -o 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.ogv 2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf
It is a bastardized AVI file (RIFF media) : http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/converting…
See this comment : "NikkiC posted 2009 May 02 19:23"
2. Replace the first 4 bytes "AVF0" with "RIFF".
Example:
AVF0F6BAVI LIST….hdrlavih8
becomes
RIFFF6BAVI LIST….hdrlavih8
Should be easy for GST devs to add this extension/filetype to their AVI/WAV/RIFF demuxer
Input #0, m4v, from 'http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/temp/vidvid/2009_08_25_21_07_59_ch3.avf':
Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 720×240 [PAR 1:1 DAR 3:1], 15 tbr, 1200k tbn, 15 tbc
The other file is likely some metadata from the device on which the video was recorded.
Problem posted to gst mailing list and added to their bug tracker : http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593128
Apparently a container format used by some HDD recorders or similar. Technically it looks like AVI container with different starting bytes (replacing initial four bytes "AVF0" with "RIFF" results in valid AVI file).
Interestingly, not even file (1) recognizes the original file…
of course file do not recognize the file since it is looking precisely at the initial four bytes
Well from past experience my trust in File is near-infinite 🙂
I would have expected some output indicating that it's a bastardized AVI or proprietary video format, and a video/x-avf mime type…
Do you think this is a bug with file? Should I file it?
not necessarily a bug, probably they don't have the 'magic number' in the database
Thanks for the bug report 😉
We just fixed it in git: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593117 – we've never seen this variant of AVI before… what created it?
Oh, wow Jan first off, you guys ROCK! This is exactly why I love free & open source software so much!
Secondly – eek, I didn't know it was a bug! Sorry for the lazy reporting! 🙂 I have a 4-camera video mixer/DVR used in security applications, I have the AVerMedia AVerDiGi 1304NET-SATA+:
http://www.avermedia.com/AVerDiGi/Product/Detail….
I'm trying to build a usability lab using it! The problem is though, it's supposed to be giving me quad-screen split videos but instead it's giving me the individual videos in this bizarre format, and the tools they've given me to work with the video file are Windows-only and they crash when I try to run them in Wine. I started giving them a shot with various video players in Linux and was happy to find they play, but I don't get the quad-screen video. 🙁
So I was thinking, it might be possible to reconstruct the 4 videos into 1 larger quad screen video using gstreamer pipelines, but I needed to get it to play in gstreamer first. 🙂
Get the gstreamer folk to make gst-plugins-ffmpeg work for everything?
…and ask why it doesn't already?
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