Question / Help Recording file wont open

[Daniel543M]

So I just did a recording session for 2 hours. OBS was working fine the whole time with the preview showing it all correctly. But when I finished and went to check the recording this message came up:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file."

I tried opening the file with VLC but it just crashes VLC.

It seems like the file has been corrupted.

It's an .mp4 file.

What can I do to fix the file without having to re-record because that is not really an option in this case. I have no idea what caused this to happen, it's never happened before and I'm pretty pissed.

 

[sam686]

Use FLV so it is playable in VLC player while OBS is still recording to it, and is playable after OBS crashes.
This recovery and playback while OBS writing to is not possible with classic OBS and MP4.
Do check if you have enough free space on disk.

(For OBS-Studio only, not OBS classic)
On OBS-Studio, mp4 have custom container option for fragmented mp4 to gain back some of FLV's advantage.
https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...uration-greatly-reduce-mp4-corruptions.44918/

 

[Daniel543M]

Use FLV so it is playable in VLC player while OBS is still recording to it, and is playable after OBS crashes.
This recovery and playback while OBS writing to is not possible with classic OBS and MP4.
Do check if you have enough free space on disk.

(For OBS-Studio only, not OBS classic)
On OBS-Studio, mp4 have custom container option for fragmented mp4 to gain back some of FLV's advantage.
https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...uration-greatly-reduce-mp4-corruptions.44918/

So the file can't be recovered?

 

[sam686]

I don't think broken MP4 is recoverable, as important video data for MP4 "moov atom"is placed at end of MP4 file after done recording. if OBS crashed while recording, the important "moov atom" is missing, ffmpeg will complain about this and refuse to work with it, and video player don't know what the video have.

FLV important data is placed at the start of video file, but have a small disadvantage of slow seeking, there are ways to convert FLV to MP4.

OBS-studio allows custom muxer/container options to prevent this MP4 problem, while OBS classic don't not have option.
For OBS classic, use FLV and then convert to MP4, there are ways that can be converted or remuxed super fast without doing any re-encoding.

 

[Daniel543M]

I don't think broken MP4 is recoverable, as important video data for MP4 "moov atom"is placed at end of MP4 file after done recording. if OBS crashed while recording, the important "moov atom" is missing, ffmpeg will complain about this and refuse to work with it, and video player don't know what the video have.

FLV important data is placed at the start of video file, but have a small disadvantage of slow seeking, there are ways to convert FLV to MP4.

OBS-studio allows custom muxer/container options to prevent this MP4 problem, while OBS classic don't not have option.
For OBS classic, use FLV and then convert to MP4, there are ways that can be converted or remuxed super fast without doing any re-encoding.

OBS didn't crash while recording. It was fine the whole time. Started recording and ended it just as I do every other time. At no point was OBS closed, minimized or crashed.

I can't use OBS Studio because NVIDIA NVENC isn't available on that.

So pretty much 2 hours just went out the drain on a recording I can't redo for a series I can't restart. Fuck that.

 

[FerretBomb]

MP4 is a very fragile file format. Don't EVER record to it. Even under Studio, if you make the switch. It can silently crash while closing out the file; the 'wait 15 seconds?' doesn't always pop up, and even if it does it can take longer than that to finish finalizing anyway.

Sorry to hear about the lost recording. But no, there's no way to recover it. It's a pile of digital garbage now.