• What forums/mailing lists for advice on video file formats?

    From Martin Leese@21:1/5 to All on Wed Mar 13 11:17:52 2019
    XPost: rec.video.desktop, rec.video.production

    Hi,

    Sorry if this is off topic, but I am stuck.

    What forums or mailing lists are suitable for
    advice on the content of a particular video file?
    The file (actually a set of eight files) has the
    extension ".wmv", but Windows Media Player
    gave the error that the file format did not match
    the extension. VLC also will not play the file.

    If anybody wants to look inside, I have placed
    the file at:
    https://sites.google.com/site/mytemporarydownloads/

    Just scroll down to the "Video file" section.

    The file was created by a fifteen-year-old boy
    who passed away seven years ago. His
    relatives are hoping the file contains video of
    him.

    Many thanks for any advice you can give.
    --
    Regards,
    Martin Leese
    E-mail: please@see.Web.for.e-mail.INVALID
    Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/

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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Martin Leese on Wed Mar 13 16:12:40 2019
    XPost: rec.video.desktop, rec.video.production

    Martin Leese wrote:
    Hi,

    Sorry if this is off topic, but I am stuck.

    What forums or mailing lists are suitable for
    advice on the content of a particular video file?
    The file (actually a set of eight files) has the
    extension ".wmv", but Windows Media Player
    gave the error that the file format did not match
    the extension. VLC also will not play the file.

    If anybody wants to look inside, I have placed
    the file at:
    https://sites.google.com/site/mytemporarydownloads/

    Just scroll down to the "Video file" section.

    The file was created by a fifteen-year-old boy
    who passed away seven years ago. His
    relatives are hoping the file contains video of
    him.

    Many thanks for any advice you can give.

    Jack_Morrisson.11.wmv
    5,797,888 bytes

    GSpot doesn't recognize it.

    https://i.postimg.cc/FzSj86wX/gspot-is-baffled.gif

    *******

    The file existed as early as "2017-09-14 17:17:11 UTC".
    It could have been uploaded for AV scanning on that date.
    If you need a SHA checksum, it will be on that
    page somewhere.

    https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/050e1e7be17135c27144b83a200fa3ebed86eb6257170a823cf97a64633fc0f2/detection

    TRiD null bytes (48.4%)
    Game Music Creator Music (13.5%)
    MacBinary 1 header (12.3%)
    MacBinary 2 header (12%)
    Adobe PhotoShop Brush (12%)

    Um, a pretty confused sort of detection ???

    We're going to need a hex editor for this. OMG.

    *******

    ffprobe Jack_Morrisson.11.wmv
    ffprobe version N-66917-g0e406ab Copyright (c) 2007-2014 the FFmpeg developers

    Jack_Morrisson.11.wmv: Invalid data found when processing input

    *******

    And that means if VLC is asked to play it, chances are
    it will refuse as well.

    *******************************************************

    You can get a hex editor here. Install and load that file.
    What do you see ? LOLZ. I think you'll see the problem
    when you do this. HxD for the win.

    https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

    Here is a picture of the screen, while I HxD it.

    https://i.postimg.cc/J7TF3H5N/Hx-D-of-file.gif

    *******

    "sum" is an ancient program which adds all the bytes
    together. Since all the bytes in the file are 0x00,
    the sum of them is also "00000". The "sum" method is
    rife with collision problems, and this is hardly a
    good test to run, but it's something you'd do for a
    very large file, where you suspected there might have
    been at least one byte which wasn't zero. So this
    tells me the file is zero all the way through.

    sum Jack_Morrisson.11.wmv
    00000 5662

    If I selected the wrong file, please report back.

    And don't waste someones time on a "video forum" with this :-)

    HxD for the win.

    Paul

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  • From Carl Fink@21:1/5 to Martin Leese on Sat Mar 16 13:19:54 2019
    XPost: rec.video.desktop, rec.video.production

    On 2019-03-13, Martin Leese <please@see.Web.for.e-mail.INVALID> wrote:

    If anybody wants to look inside, I have placed
    the file at:
    https://sites.google.com/site/mytemporarydownloads/

    Just scroll down to the "Video file" section.

    The file was created by a fifteen-year-old boy
    who passed away seven years ago. His
    relatives are hoping the file contains video of
    him.

    Many thanks for any advice you can give.

    Concur with Paul. That's not a video file at all, just a string of the same character over and over.
    --
    Carl Fink nitpicking@nitpicking.com

    Read John Grant's book, Corrupted Science: http://a.co/9UsUoGu
    Dedicated to ... Carl Fink!

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  • From Martin Leese@21:1/5 to Paul on Mon Mar 18 22:37:46 2019
    XPost: rec.video.desktop, rec.video.production

    Paul wrote:
    ...
    If I selected the wrong file, please report back.

    And don't waste someones time on a "video forum" with this :-)

    HxD for the win.

    Thanks Paul (and Carl), you did exactly as
    I had hoped. It never occurred to me that
    the file would be full of nulls. As I said
    in my original post, there are another seven
    files. I will check these with HxD.

    --
    Regards,
    Martin Leese
    E-mail: please@see.Web.for.e-mail.INVALID
    Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/

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