DivX ;-) Repair Guide
Written by Candela
Version 3.3 October 2001
Version 3.3, October 2001
- Completely reorganized and severely updated chapter 5
- Updated section 6.7 and 6.9 with info about DivX 4
- Small changes everywhere (links, spelling errors, ...)
Version 3.2, June 2001
- Updated section 6.7 describing solutions for weird colours during playback
- Updated section 6.8 with some info to split, join or repair damaged ASF
files
- Added section 6.9 about the different available codec packages
- Added section 6.10 for manipulating FourCC codes
- Added section 6.11 with possible fixes for hardware overlay problems on
Matrox and nVidia cards
Version 3.1, April 2001
- Added section 5.11 about the Divx AntiFreeze DirectShow filter
- Updated section 6.1 with a possible fix for hardware overlay problems on
Matrox G400/G450 (and other?) video cards.
Version 3.0, April 2001
- Rewrote section 4. Caveats because of the new VirtualDub (1.4d) release
- Added new section 5.10 about making "pseudo patches" (advanced
users only)
- Added ASF to AVI conversion in the tips & tricks section
Version 2.6, March 2001
- Updated tips & tricks
- Added VirtualDub for autodetect of bad frames in section 2.5
- Other minor (mostly visual) changes
Version 2.5, January 2001
- Updated other possibilities to deal with errors
- Updated tips & tricks
- Updated original text
- Cleaned up the Word 2000 generated HTML code. It's HMTL 4.01 compliant now.
Yeah Baby!
Version 2.0, October 2000
- Added other possibilities to deal with errors
- Added tips & tricks
- Added "Guide" to the name of the article
- Minor adjustments to the original text
Version 1.0, August 2000
1. Introduction
After many hours of tedious downloading, and finally sitting down to watch
your movie some of you may have noticed one of the following things:
- Suddenly the image froze but the sound kept playing. (example
video)
- Disoriented or equally coloured blocks of pixels distorted the image for
a short time. (example screenshot)
You probably didn't pay too much attention to the latter, but in the first
case you had to get out of your lazy chair and fast-forward a bit to make the
movie play again. If it happened more than once, you probably deleted the file
while wishing the ripper of the movie a one way ticket to hell. But were these
'bad frames', as they are generally called, really the ripper's
fault? The answer, in most cases, is quite simply no. They may be in fact your
own fault. In this article I'm going to talk about the cause of these errors,
how they can be prevented and finally how to solve them.
After I first wrote this document I have discovered other and easier ways to
deal with errors. These however, are all described in a separate section. The
original method still gives you the most control and makes it possible for you
to understand what is going on. Some of the new methods merely simplify the
process but the idea behind them is exactly the same. Other possibilities don't
actually repair the corrupt data but conceal or patch it.
For the most part, this article is about repairing corrupt files and freezes.
However, there can be a lot other problems with DivX ;-). Section 6. Tips &
Tricks is specifically devoted to these so you can immediatly jump there if
your problem is not related to corrupt data.
I'm always open to suggestions and improvements. You can contact me at
the following e-mail address divx_repair@hotmail.com.
Or you can try to find me on IRC (EFNET or
DALNET) where I'm known as Candela.
Please do not ask me any questions about DVD ripping and try to find an answer
to these and other questions at Doom9's MPEG
Palace, DivX Digest or Nicky
Page's Digital Solutions instead. In case of problems with movies in
(S)VCD format, I suggest you try VCD Help.
Also refer to these sites for all software in case my links fail.
And finally, do NOT ask me where to download movies, you will be ignored.
2. The cause
2.1. Some history
When I first saw these errors, I thought something had gone wrong during encoding
and that the ripper hadn't bothered to check the movie before releasing it on
the Internet. I didn't really give it anymore attention until one day I was
talking to someone on IRC. It turned out that he had the same movie as me but
without the image freezing. On top of that, the filesize of his movie was exactly
the same as mine, which proved that it was in fact the same rip and not a different
version made by someone else. After playing my version on different systems
to make sure my computer wasn't to blame, there was only one possibility left:
the file I had was corrupt. After some further investigation this turned out
to be true and I was able to replace the corrupt data (only 2046 bytes to be
exact) to successfully repair my movie.
2.2. Who's to blame?
Why or how does data in the movies get corrupt? In an ideal world it shouldn't
happen, but then again in an ideal world I would have lots of money, buy all
movies on DVD and wouldn't even bother to write this document.
Resuming a broken download is probably the most common, but not the only source
of corruption. When a filetransfer gets broken unexpectedly
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