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

[Martin Leese]

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.

[Paul]

Post by Martin Leese
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
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.

Loading Image...

*******

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.

Loading Image...

*******

"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.

L:\>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

[Martin Leese]

Paul wrote:
...

Post by Paul
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.

[Carl Fink]

Post by Martin Leese
If anybody wants to look inside, I have placed
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.