video file oddities

I recently got a new 3TB external hard drive to replace my old one that was both nearing capacity and seemed to be on the verge of failing. I did a full copy of the old 500 gb external to my local disk, spot-verified some files I thought most likely to corrupt (those being the newest ones put on the external that were what made me think I had issues), and when I was happy formatted the old drive and copied the files over to the new 3TB. Unfortunately I did something very stupid and deleted the set on the local disk without verifying ALL the ones on the external, only the same set of files that had given me trouble in the past. The result is what seemed to be a MASSIVE amount of corrupted videos with no original to restore. The behavior was very similar to what I encountered on the old drive: the videos would start playing, but you couldn't skip around and at some point it would stop. The whole file wasn't there. Another type also popped up, where the video would start playing with no sound, and attempting to skip ahead would freeze it. Then one did something a bit different that gave me pause to think maybe it's not the drive corrupting my files. One started with sound, but did the same freeze when trying to skip ahead. If I left it alone, it would play just fine though. I downloaded VLC and tried playing the file in it, and it worked perfectly, jumping around in all. So I went back and checked the other "corrupted" files, and they all play fine in VLC also. So what on earth made them stop working right in Windows Media Player (11) but still do fine in VLC? As far as I'm aware, I didn't change any settings, and I've never had a codec pack installed on this machine. Is it possible that the files actually ARE minorly corrupted, but somehow VLC is able to power through that and play anyway? These files all played just fine in WMP before the transfers back and forth from the external drives. I'm really confused, as it seemed the only possible explanation was file corruption, but now that doesn't seem likely as a different player can play them.

 

Try copying one of the files that doesn't play well in WMP to your internal HD and see if that copy plays properly using WMP. That might tell us if the file has lost any data or if it a problem playing videos from/off the external.

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One thought is if you didn't format the internal HD but just deleted the videos then something like Recuva should find the deleted files and let you copy them to the external again. I'm not sure file corruption is an issue but just wanted to let you know. if you are considering doing this then I would make a new folder on the external to hold the new copies of any files found in Good condition (green light icon) by Recuva and go ahead and copy them. Then once you have a second copy try the test above with one of the original videos that wouldn't play. The test above of copying a file from external to internal will possibly overwrite one of the files you may want to get a second copy of using Recuva so get the second copy first.

 

WMM is 'infected' with DRM .. this is 'clever' code that performs a billion operations instead of one in order to frustrate the 'decompilers' and 'revers engineering' crew .. unfortunately this means it wastes 99% of the time doing nothing - and if the new hard disk needs a few more cpu cycles to find the data WMM won't be able to show a movie in 'real time' and will start dropping frames, dropping sound & freezing up ...

Just toss out WMM & stick to VLC and all will be well ...

 

I should have mentioned in my original post that I have a copy of the 'corrupted' files on my internal drive once more, and they behave exactly the same as the external. It was in fact the internal ones I noticed first. My thought was to reformat the external to see if that fixed the corruption issue. I indeed did NOT format it new, as it came preformatted for windows. (On that note, when formatting it, what options should I use? NTFS I know, but what about the allocation sizes? Before I've always selected "windows default." The drive is a Seagate GoFlex Desk USB 3.0 3TB if that matters.) I was entertaining the idea for awhile that the problem lay in the USB link, as two different drives did the same thing. However on the last copy from external to internal, there was ZERO corruption. The two sets I have now are completely identical, confirmed by hash checking. Unfortunately the known-good files for the videos that currently won't play on WMP are long gone, so I can't hash check those to find out for sure where the fault is. I'll try Recuva when I get the time, but I doubt it will find much, as it's been overwritten a few times since the originals were deleted. I'll just used VLC if I have to, but I'd like to keep that option in reserve. I like using WMP more than VLC. Thanks for the help.

 

You've done as much troubleshooting as I could do. You've eliminated USB connection or a faulty drive. I can't really add anything helpful since I almost never use WMP. I'm leaning away from file corruption and towards some change to how WMP or the computer handles large video files. VLC can overcome small errors in video files but so can most players.

See if anyone else has some input. There are skins available for VLC that will make its interface look more like WMP but as you said that is a last resort.