Ripped files won't open

[rfanning]

I used Handbrake/Media Fork for the first time yesterday to rip DVDs.
Everything seemed to go well, but when I tried to open the resulting files I got a message that read: Error opening move. The movie could not be opened. The files appear as documents on my hard drive, not movie files. The error message is from Quicktime. I'm using a Mac Powerbook G4 running 10.3.9.

I would appreciate any help I can get. Thanks.

[jbrjake]

Does the name of the video you made end in .mp4 or .avi ?

Were you using an average bitrate, a target file size, or constant quality?

[baggss]

I'm willing to bet you removed the .mp4 file extension form the end of the title when you named them before ripping. Try adding the .mp4 extension back and see what happens.

[Zran]

I was having a similar problem and changed the file extention and it works fine. Thanks.

[rfanning]

Thank you. I'll give that a try.

[rfanning]

That did the trick. Thanks for your help

[gtrp5]

I have exactly the same problem with not being able to open ripped files and get the same message, but my files do say .mp4 at the end. What can I do about this!!?

[rgbfsa]

I'm having the same problem also, I can't seem to open or save to itunes unless I cut the movie in half, so maybe it's the file size. I'm trying different combos of settings to get the smallest size with keeping quality up, but so far no luck, any advice? I'm setting it for MP4 for my ipod, so the files save as .m4v files, and I'm using a new probook.

[flowney]

Same problem here with more details.

I have a set of DVD files on disk, ripped by the latest version of MTR so copy protection should not be an issue.

After several attempts using variou settings but always choosing the AVC/H.264 CODEC, I get files with an .mp4 suffix that QuickTime Player cannot open. My last attempt was at 100% quality with "Keep aspect ratio" off (720x480). In my first attempts, I was saving to external FW disks with 1 TB available but I'm thinking that having only 10 GB on my boot volume (where scratch space is probably needed) may be an issue. If so, perhaps MediaFork should do some checking to see if there is enough scratch disk space.

I've freed up some boot disk space and am running MediaFork with 25 MB of disk space available on the boot drive. More later.

------------------- update -------------------------

The rip went as advertised after I freed-up disk space on my boot drive. However, I also opted not to reach for 100% using 2 pass @ an average of 1800 which created a 1.36 GB file. BTW, QuickTime Pro's AppleTV bitrate seems to be on the order of 2042 for video.

As I mentioned initially, I had turned off "Keep ... ratio" and set the size to 720x480. Yet, the movie produced measures 720x304 which would seem to be at leas a UI bug (don't let users do things that won't come out as advertised). Given the moderator's comment about 100% (another UI fault?), I suppose I need to retest that too.

[hawkman]

My last attempt was at 100% quality

Good Lord, those files must be massive. Like, much bigger than the DVD!? The quality slider is a bit confusing, it's not "100% DVD quality", it's losslessly compressing the video stream decoded from that DVD, I believe. Hence, 100% = EPIC.

Try about 70%, there shouldn't really be a tangible difference between your file and the DVD, and it'll be a slightly less enormous. Depending on your eyes, you may want to bump it up higher - say, 74% - but I've not heard of anyone going beyond that, really. The gains are really, really small, compared to the extra space it takes.

This is probably the root of your issues with opening the files, too. Computers don't generally like files that big.

[newzooreview]

Mediafork creates the file through a normally long process, the file size looks appropriate (there's a movie in there somewhere), the .mp4 extension is there, the file has the Quicktime icon, but it won't open in Quicktime (generates the error mentioned by the original poster), and it won't copy to iTunes.

This seems to happen for me when the h.264 conversion is run in a queue. Last night it got through the first movie in the queue and then made one of these bad .mp4 files for the second movie. After that it looks like Mediafork shut itself down: I had two of four movies converted, and the last on done was the bad one. After that it seems that Mediafork crashed.

I seems like Mediafork is writing bad file headers (hence the immediate error message when trying to open in Quicktime).

Since this is associated with a queue it make Mediafork of limited use since I can get one un-queued conversion done per day.

[newzooreview]

I just saw the bad file creation in action. The rip was 99.52% completed and Mediafork simply crashed. It left me with an mp4 file of 5.2 Gb that will not open.

It would be interesting to know if anyone else has watched the end of the conversion to see if this is happening to them as well. Are these conversions that leave un-openable files all crashing, or are some conversions that complete normally also producing the problem?

[baggss]

My last attempt was at 100% quality

There is your problem. As suggested, use 70%.

Mediafork creates the file through a normally long process, the file size looks appropriate (there's a movie in there somewhere), the .mp4 extension is there, the file has the Quicktime icon, but it won't open in Quicktime (generates the error mentioned by the original poster), and it won't copy to iTunes.

This seems to happen for me when the h.264 conversion is run in a queue. Last night it got through the first movie in the queue and then made one of these bad .mp4 files for the second movie. After that it looks like Mediafork shut itself down: I had two of four movies converted, and the last on done was the bad one. After that it seems that Mediafork crashed.

I seems like Mediafork is writing bad file headers (hence the immediate error message when trying to open in Quicktime).

Since this is associated with a queue it make Mediafork of limited use since I can get one un-queued conversion done per day.

Sorry. I regularly run with 2 instances of HB open and up to 4 DVDs/Files queued up each. I'm ripping at lower quality settings (for the iPod) and have no issues except with DVDs that have known problems.

Tell us what Movies(s) these are and what your exact settings are. In all likelihood it is a setting that is causing your problem.

[newzooreview]

In this case the movie was Babel, full disc extraction via MTR 3r14d. MTR did not give any warning about needing to extract in movie only mode, so as usual I went with full disk.

The MediaFork settings were x264 encoding in CRF mode (76% quality) and 160 kbps audio (no subtitles). I left the picture settings at default (I checked and the example frames all looked ok).

After my last post, I tried to encode this VIDEO_TS folder with VisuaHub, and it gave me an odd error and wouldn't start the encode.

My conclusion at this point is that VisualHub caught something wrong about the folder and didn't proceed while MediaFork proceeded and died (once last night and once today) at over 99% complete.

So, it doesn't appear to be related to queuing files, but it does seem to indicated that VisualHub is doing some very basic checking on the integrity of the VIDEO_TS folder.

My new workflow will be to see if my VIDEO_TS files begin encoding in VisualHub before I do the full encode in MediaFork. If this workaround is successful I'll be happy. The CRF encoding seems to give me good results every time it works.

I've re-extracted my copy of Babel in Movie Only Mode, and that VIDEO_TS folder does begin encoding in VisualHub, so I will soon test my theory that if it starts up in VisualHub it will proceed ok in MediaFork.

Many thanks.

[baggss]

Good troubleshooting job and nice info. Thanks for all of that.

[hawkman]

As I mentioned initially, I had turned off "Keep ... ratio" and set the size to 720x480. Yet, the movie produced measures 720x304 which would seem to be at leas a UI bug (don't let users do things that won't come out as advertised). Given the moderator's comment about 100% (another UI fault?), I suppose I need to retest that too.

The aspect ratio stuff was a bug in b1, there's a longstanding fix in the current source, don't worry. However, if you check the "Anamorphic" box, you won't get that issue.

I'm not quite sure why you refer to the percentage stuff as being a UI fault? Confusing, perhaps, but it's telling the truth - just referring to the uncompressed video stream, not the DVD. Quite hard to find a suitable 2 or 3-word descriptor for that slider that's not a lie

[newzooreview]

Continuing the troubleshooting on h.264 encoding for a VIDEO_TS of the movie Babel. I re-ripped a full disc MTR r14d VIDEO_TS file. Before starting the encoding I checked 1) that VisualHub would at least begin encoding, and 2) that DTOX would make an img file of the main title. Yes on both.

1. The VIDEO_TS folder successfully finished a full encoding in VisualHub on AppleTV (h.264) GoNuts setting (no "advanced" options used).

2. The same VIDEO_TS folder got 99.7% through encoding with MediaFork and then crashed MediaFork (x264, 76% CFR, English subtitles enabled for non-English dialogue (second set of English subtitles--first give subtitles for all dialogue).

Before crashing, MediaFork had created a 5.7 Gb file (.m4v). Previously I had not set the .m4v option, so earlier the crashed file looked the same but with the .mp4 extension. I think this is a non-issue.

That file would not open in Quicktime or iTunes (as before). I tried to open it in MPEG Streamclip. Streamclip objected, but I chose open anyway. After a couple of minutes Streamclip said that it couldn't find a video or audio stream, so maybe it's more than a file header issue (or Streamclip really relies on the file header and cannot otherwise identify video and audio, I know nothing of mpeg-4 file format).

So, there's an issue with MediaFork on this VIDEO_TS folder.

1. It could be that CFR hates this folder. I'll check the bitrate on the successful VisualHub encode and try a two-pass encode with MediaFork at that average bitrate. If that works I'll have a nice, optimized copy (after a lot of work!).

2. Maybe the re-ripped VIDEO_TS folder would have worked fine in MediaFork without the subtitles (I wasn't using them last time when MediaFork crashed, however). If the two-pass encode works ok I'll try a CFR of this VIDEO_TS without any subtitles just to see if the subtitles are tripping it up. The encoded file won't be much use, but I'm curious.

I hope this is of interest to someone. I will post the results in the hope that I'm homing in on a workflow that ferrets out potential MediaFork problems before I let it loose on hours of overnight encoding.

[newzooreview]

Following up on my previous post; I was successful in encoding the Babel VIDEO_TS file with a 2-pass encoding at 3600 bitrate.

So, a file that wouldn't encode with CFR would encode with 2-pass (and also with VisualHub GoNuts setting).

I'm not sure why the CFR choked on this file, but I suppose my backup for failed CFR encodes will be 2-pass (twice as long, but probably optimal quality).

[mrmugno]

I've made multiple attempts at encoding Pulp Fiction with new HB beta download and the resulting file will not open.

1st pass goes by as normal and second pass slows to 8.4fps average. 10 hour encoding time results in the "error opening file" QT message. Also, HB stales out at the end of encoding, where I need to force quit.

MP4 H.264 2 Pass same as source FPS
1500 KBPS Anamorphic

This seems to look like the audio drop issues that everyone is so widely reporting, except I can't even get the file to open, so maybe it is a larger issue.

[newzooreview]

Although HandBrake successfully encoded the Babel VIDEO_TS, HandBrake failed to keep the subtitles in sync. It fails repeatedly, no matter how I encode the file (CFR, 2-pass, one pass, x264, ffmpeg--it utterly fails to keep the subtitles in sync). The subtitles are perfectly in sync when playing the VIDEO_TS on the computer

I appreciate the work going into HandBrake, but at this point I'm getting less than 50% success on good encoding with clean VIDEO_TS files that play correctly with DVD Player on the Mac, and that burn to DVDs that play perfectly on my DVD player.

HandBrake is wasting a lot of my time at this point, but sadly I don't know of anything better (forget VisualHub; it can't even handle subtitles or queue encoding with different setting, much less provide serious controls over encoding parameters or use x264.)

[deckeda]

... (forget VisualHub; it can't even handle subtitles or queue encoding with different setting, much less provide serious controls over encoding parameters or use x264.)

You probably should spend some time on the Visual Hub forums, because you're wrong about everything except lack of subtitle support. But even so, there are workarounds if you search on their forums.