Hi everyone
I wonder if anyone could help me.
I have recently returned from a 2 week holiday in Florida with a 32gb micro SD card full of holiday videos taken on a GoPro style camera 1920 x 1080 30fps H.264 in a .mov container.
Upon putting the card into my laptop I began to import the footage into Premiere Pro. I could view the videos absolutely fine no problems, everything crystal clear and great footage. Half way through one of the videos it started to "pixelate" and show signs of what appears to be corruption. I just assumed it was that file so went back to one of the videos that originally played fine with no issues and that appears to be corrupted too. I then went on to check all of the videos and, you guessed it, all corrupted. Absolutely devastating to discover I'm sure you can understand. Even if I take Premiere Pro out of the equation, open the file itself from the memory card and play through any player it is corrupted. It is also the same on a completely different laptop with no Premiere Pro installed. I know for a fact these videos were fine as they started to play with no issues when I originally put the card into the laptop. They also played back on the camera fine, this problem only occurred when inserting the card into the laptop for the first time. If I try to view them on the camera now however, it plays the first second or so then says there is a file error.
Unfortunately I didn't copy the files from the card anywhere else before attempting to play them so essentially the files are completely ruined. I have tried some basic corruption troubleshooting but none of that has made any difference. In fact, no software seems to even recognise the files as being corrupted.
What I don't understand is how the files can go from playing absolutely fine to completely corrupted in a second. No power failure or abrupt disconnection issues, just corrupted whilst playing a the file. Could this be memory card corruption? If this is the case I don't understand why it didn't happen whilst recording the videos. I've included some info below.
Windows 10 Home 64 bit
i7-4710MQ CPU @ 2.5 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M
The memory card is a Toshiba Exceria 32gb Micro SD
As you can see by screenshots below, the corruption is showing at the bottom of the footage but randomly jumps around the frame when playing. Also note that the frame rate jumps around a lot too. It was all recorded at 30fps and when it was originally played before this problem happened, it stayed at 30fps when playing. There's also a crazy amount of frames dropped when playing according to MPC. It just seems like the H.264 wrapper is completely and utterly nackered and I now have a very upset girlfriend to deal with!
Anyone have any ideas? I really appreciate your help, thanks in advance.
17
Replies
Examine the files with MediaInfo, opening the file and then go to Tree view. your examples above have crazy frame rates showing. So I am guessing they are variable frame rates which are not compatible with Premiere. Normally you have to convert them to constant frame rates and a tool to do this is HandBrake. I do not know if opening in Premiere and then saving a project could do anything to corrupt your media. Here is one of my son's GoPro 4K files. notice that it is constant frame rate. Also note that GoPro recommends using Studio software that they provide to transcode their long GOP codec media to Cineform for ease of editing. I hope I got that last correct I do not use GoPro myself.
From the GoPro Studio software manual ...
OK I have done that and this what it's come back with...no surprises to see it's variable frame rate although the minimum and maximum aren't miles apart. Still worth converting with something like Handbrake do you think?
Hi guys
I've converted a couple of the files using Handbrake. MediaInfo now says it is a CFR (see below) but unfortunately it has made no difference whatsoever. The frame rates are still jumping around all over the place when playing in any media player and the "corruption" just the same.
One thing I didn't notice until now, I took some still photos with the same camera and they are corrupted too. Colour all over the place and lines through the image. I recorded another video tonight using the same camera on the same memory card and that is also corrupted immediately, the camera won't even play it back, so doesn't look like it's even a Premiere Pro problem. Unless Premiere somehow did something to the memory card. Sort of at a loss now. Anyone know anything about memory card corruption and if there is anything else I can try?
Many thanks
AdChoices