AVI files won't open in Avidemux

[Ahari]

Hi everyone,

I have 1500+ home movie clips to process in Avidemux, but they won't open. They play perfectly in all my players. These are just the ones that won't open - I have already processed over 1000 clips that were fine. The clips that processed okay were from the same source, so I don't understand why so many are not opening in Avidemux.

I have posted a very short video clip (the shortest one I have - only 1.4Mb!) here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3334489/2009-01-22%2016.02.33.avi. This file is representative of the others.

Media info seems to show no size for the audio.

How do I fix this in bulk?

[styrol]

It's DV video in AVI container. AFAIK Avidemux can't open all kind of DV.

You can try Avisynth input to Avidemux via AVS Proxy. 

Changing file extension form AVI to DV allows QuickTime based MPEG Streamclip to open the file (and to cut and convert to MP4). But MPEG Streamclip is not for batch converting files.

[mean]

you can also use any tool that can remux the files into a type2 avi
For example with ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i source.avi -acodec copy -vcodec copy dest.avi
dest.avi can then be edited normally

[styrol]

I did try mkvmerge which also failed to open the file. ffmpeg works.

[Ahari]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions offered.

I solved my problem by using a slightly modified version of Baldrick's suggestion (from Videohelp.com forum http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/345315-AVI-files-won-t-open-in-Avidemux?p=2155022&posted=1#post2155022).

I used WinFF with a custom preset with only the following code in the preset:

Code Select Expand

-acodec copy -vcodec copy

(thanks to mean for getting the code right!)

you can also use any tool that can remux the files into a type2 avi
For example with ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i source.avi -acodec copy -vcodec copy dest.avi
dest.avi can then be edited normally

This worked extremely well and processed the files very fast! I just selected the 1500 odd files and dropped them in WinFF, hit "convert" and went to bed! Don't know how long it took, but I'm guessing it was only about 30 minutes!

The files now all open perfectly in Avidemux, with no re-encoding having been done at all by WinFF - great little app!!

Thanks again.