Verify Integrity of Video Files

[j7n]

Do any of the currently popular container formats, such as Matroska, have error detection? What can I use to verify integrity of my video files?

I know I should have created and stored checksums.

[Adub]

Another thing is you can mux those checksums into the mkv container as an attachment.

Just create and sfv file using quicksfv or rapidcrc, and store mux that file in with your file in mkvmerge.

[Adub]

Unless you are trying to check files that you already had. Frankly the best way is to watch the file. If it checks out, than create a checksum file and mux it in, so that you can check for sure in the future.

Just out of curiousity, what prompted this?

[j7n]

what prompted this
I once resorted to 'watching' after a bad memory module was installed. Now a hard drive has failed and I want to ensure that the files that still do read are intact.

From now on I'll just create SFV-md5 files.

[foxyshadis]

Run the files through ffmpeg. Something like:

ffmpeg -i <file> -f avi -benchmark -y NUL

It'll show a warning anytime a sync error or corruption is detected, something like "overread" or "backstep" for audio or "slice" or "concealing" for video. Some corruptions look like valid streams to the decoder, though, and you can never know without watching.

There's a half-decent chance you'll find a few old errors that you never knew were there, since ffdshow has pretty good error corrections. :p

[j7n]

Yeah ffmpeg is good. I've used it before for MPEG-2 PS, and after uprading to 2007-Sep-10 it now also eats matroska.

So I suppose it is not possible to find errors without decoding. Too bad.

[foxyshadis]

Video doesn't have any checksums, normally, except for TS, rtsp (maybe?), and headers in OGM, so yeah, it's pretty much impossible to reason about the validity of the data.