I have a number of videos taken several years ago with a Canon PowerShot S100. These videos have significant sentimental value. I haven't looked at them for quite some time now, but have recently started to do so in order to select a few for our home website, using Handbrake to convert them to a convenient size and format. Much to my surprise, the audio stream in all of them is significantly screwed up. For each file, MediaInfo tells me the audio stream is: English, 1 536 kb/s, 48.0 kHz, 16 bits, 2 channels, PCM (Little / Signed).
This isn't really a Handbrake problem, I expect, but I'm hoping some kind person will take pity on my and give me some suggestions.
No matter what I play the files in, whether HandBrake, VLC, Windows Media Player, etc, the video stream is fine but the audio stream is, well, it's hard to describe. I cannot exactly say there's no audio, because every couple of seconds there's a very faint buzzing noise.
The files were created almost six years ago, and I have to presume they were fine at the time (I honestly cannot remember, but I can't imagine I would have kept them if they weren't). If it were just the one file, I might chalk it up to having had a finger over the microphone at the time of recording - but it's not.
I thought maybe it's a codec thing, but k-lite didn't make a difference at all. Using Handbrake to convert the audio doesn't seem to result in any error messages in the log, which seems to indicate that it thinks the audio is just fine.
Does this ring any bells for anyone? I'm all out of ideas.
Steps to reproduce the problem (If Applicable):
HandBrake version (e.g., 1.0.0):
1.2.2
Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, macOS 10.13 High Sierra, Windows 10 Creators Update):
The only specs I can find for that camera say the audio is "Linear PCM Stereo". They don't tell us the bit depth, endian-ness, or samplerate. HandBrake thinks it 16 bit, little endian, 48khz which is pretty standard, but could also be the result of software falling back to defaults when something critical isn't being specified.
Have you checked to see if Canon supplies any software for the camera that can play or "export" the files to other formats? It's possible the audio isn't fully specified correctly in the file, but their software knows the "right" defaults.
I don't think there are any Canon-specific video playback utilities, but I'll have a look on their website. They still show the S100 series up there, but the only "processing" software I can see is DPP - and I don't think that does video.
Given that they're *.MOV files, I tried QuickTime. Same result.
How might I get a sample to someone? Dropbox link, perhaps?
So, new data point for consideration. Just spent some time going through my image library, which includes pictures and videos going back years. Focusing on the timeframe when I had the s100, I now have a strong suspicion that I may know what is happening, even if it makes no sense.
Some of the *.MOV files have companion *.THM files; audio for these files seems to play just fine. *.MOV files that do not have companion *.THM files seem to exhibit the problem playing audio (video plays just fine). I have no idea why some of the files have no corresponding *.THM files; maybe I googled to find out what they were (as I just did) and figured they were simply thumbnail files that could be deleted - but it's VERY odd that the ones that weren't deleted seem to have some bearing on whether or not the audio plays.
Getting late, so I'll have to dig around a bit more on this tomorrow - but I'm curious if this situation might ring a bell for anyone.