Mpeg2 needs fixing

[neo squidward]

Hi! I just downloaded Night of the Living Dead from http://www.archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead (Don't worry, it's totally free/legal as the movie is now in public domain). The version I chose was, of course, the 4.1gb MPEG2 version. My ultimate aim is to transcode it and burn to a DVD to watch on my TV.

Problem is that the last section of the film is not playing, and most programs would not allow me to skip to other parts of the film (ie WMP10 would ignore clicks on the trackbar thingo - WinDVD worked but wouldn't play sound when skipping to another part and of course wouldn't play the last 15 minutes or so). I'm hoping that this is a problem with the file that might be fixable (don't really want to waste another 4.1gb/6hours to see if a re-download works).

I'm not really that knowledgeable when it comes to this sort of stuff, but could anybody recommend a program that might be able to check the file, or somehow fix it (and perhaps a link to a tutorial to use it if it's not made for idiots like me). I had a look at muxman but have no idea what it does or how to use it (couldn't even open the file :/).

Any help would be much appreciated :)

edit: Sorry if this isn't the right forum section, I wasn't sure what area this problem comes under.

[int 21h]

I'd try vlc. (http://www.videolan.org)

[CirTap]

yep, great source for classics :-) "D.O.A's" another goodie I got from there.

have you tried DGIndex to "scan" thru the file, if it can read and demux it, chances are you can restore whats messed up.
even if you miss a few broken frames or half a second, AviSynth may help to put the bits back together, might be tedious, but that's how I was able to "recreate" an almost lost 15Gig AVI from a trashed HD, and I ended up with only a few missing freames where the drive was physically damaged.

edit: here's another idea I just came up with...
you can check easily (well sort of) if it's the original file or just your download was bogus w/o re-downloading another 4 gigs.

create a dummy file with approx. 4gig in size, can be nulls, whatever and name it anything you want. eg "dummy.mpeg".
point your FTP client to download the MPEG from archive.org via the FTP link provided there, download a few bits to another file in the same directory as "dummy.mpeg", eg. "dead.mpeg",
stop or pause the FTP download.
delete the "dead.mpeg" fragment you just downloaded and rename "dummy.mpeg" to "dead.mpeg"
hit "resume" or "continue" in your FTP client, it should take up at the end of your dummie's filesize from the original file from archive.org.

when the download is finished, make a binary cut of "dead.mpeg", which has trash data in the first 4gigs you created, and the (hopefully) good video at the end.
stipp off the 4gigs dummy data and you should have the remainder -- which might be ok or not :)
use VLC to check the chopped off piece. if all's fine, you can cut the first movie you downloaded (the one with the corrupted end) and add the two pieces together.

afaik there's a binary cut-tool in the download area, otherwise google for some. it should give you the ability the split a file at any give point.

Cuttermaran (see download area) might be a valuable easy to use tool to cut and demux the MPEGs, then load them into Muxman and get you DVD.
Easy :)

Good luck,
CirTap

[neo squidward]

I'd try vlc. (http://www.videolan.org)

It works with vlc! Thanks a whole bunch. Thanks for the other info too CirTap :) I presume this means the file isn't totally borked, ie. it will work fine if I transcode it and burn it to DVD?

[int 21h]

Why transcode it? Its already 720x480 with 192kbps AC3...

[neo squidward]

As I said before I know very little of these things. I'm going to burn it to DVD, not 100% sure how to but I'm doing some reading. I just used 'transcoding' because it sounded like I knew what I was talking about :D

[CirTap]

you confuse transcode with muxing.
[...] multiplexing (also muxing or MUXing) is the combining of two or more information channels onto a common transmission medium using [...] a multiplexer or (MUX). The reverse of this is known as inverse multiplexing, demultiplexing, or demuxing.[...]
s.a. http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=multiplex
[...]transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion from one encoding scheme [...] to a different encoding scheme[...]
you may need to demux the mpeg program stream (PS) into its two (or more) elementary streams (ES), video and audio, which are then used by a "muxing application" (e.g.Muxman) to create the VOB and IFOs. Its them you burn on the DVD, not the mpeg.
As this mpeg happens to be a NTSC stream, you must not need to transcode the video if your hardware player and TV set play NTSC titles (many new PAL hardware does so, ie. "good" DVD hardware players are capaable to transcode NTSC movies on the fly if you live in PAL-land and have PAL-only TV connected)

CirTap

[Sirber]

cool site! :D I love zombie movies! :D