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iPod 1080p Movie "bad movie atom"

Tallest Skil

Tallest Skil

macrumors P6
Original poster
Aug 13, 2006
16,044
4
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
I added an HD movie to iTunes and tried to give it artwork, but iTunes hung for around an hour, so I just force quit it. Now the movie doesn't show up in iTunes, isn't recognized when I try to re-add it, and QuickTime says that "An invalid public movie atom was found in the movie".

What's next?
 
Okay, VLC will play it, but without audio. The video files seems to be perfectly intact, so how do I free it (and audio) from the broken shell of a file it's in? Is there a way to resave a file to a different (or the same) format with VLC?

Or better yet, just get it working in QuickTime/iTunes again?

Thanks for your consideration, anyone reading this.
 
Strange nobody's responding XD
Something similar happened to me, in that the syncing of an audio file caused iTunes to hang. After restarting, the audio file could not be added again.

I ended up removing and reimporting my actual library (on PCs, the Library file is located at C:\Users\<Your Name>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl - not sure about macs) After doing this, the audio file could once again be added to the library.

Not sure what iTunes did to it... and while I realize that this scenario isn't 100% identical to your issue, perhaps it is similar in that you just have to "reboot" your library file?
 
pisces03x said:
Strange nobody's responding XD
Something similar happened to me, in that the syncing of an audio file caused iTunes to hang. After restarting, the audio file could not be added again.

I ended up removing and reimporting my actual library (on PCs, the Library file is located at C:\Users\<Your Name>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl - not sure about macs) After doing this, the audio file could once again be added to the library.

Not sure what iTunes did to it... and while I realize that this scenario isn't 100% identical to your issue, perhaps it is similar in that you just have to "reboot" your library file?
Click to expand...

Did you remove the Library file itself or the Library file and the media files themselves or just the media files?
 
I exported the iTunes Library to an external hdd, removed all content right from iTunes and re-added the duplicate library. Sorry for any confusion. Good luck though! =)
 
pisces03x said:
I exported the iTunes Library to an external hdd, removed all content right from iTunes and re-added the duplicate library. Sorry for any confusion. Good luck though! =)
Click to expand...

Okay, I copied my iTunes Library (to another computer), removed all of my content in iTunes (but told it to keep the files), quit iTunes, put the copy back, and reopened. It wouldn't add.

I didn't figure that that would work, because if QuickTime itself refused to play the file, I didn't imagine that resetting an aspect of iTunes would make much difference.
 
I had something similar a month or two ago... Just a corrupted Quicktime movie file. I could find no useful info anywhere on how to repair it. I opened with a hex editor and played around for an hour or two and couldn't figure out anything to try for myself. Apple's developer site had some info on quicktime files and how the containers work, but I didn't spend the time to try and learn myself (not saying that I would have even been able to had I tried).

I did find this one place you can upload corrupted Quicktime files and a guy will fix them for you if they are fixable. See here:

http://aeroquartet.com/movierepair/repair.html

But he charges an arm and a leg to fix them, I think the quote he gave me was $140. It wasn't worth it to me, but I guess it depends on how valuable your file is.
 
Heb1228 said:
I did find this one place you can upload corrupted Quicktime files and a guy will fix them for you if they are fixable. See here:

http://aeroquartet.com/movierepair/repair.html

But he charges an arm and a leg to fix them, I think the quote he gave me was $140. It wasn't worth it to me, but I guess it depends on how valuable your file is.
Click to expand...

My stars! This can't be that hard! I was adding artwork, it froze, I force quit, now I'm just stuck with half an artwork file in there gumming up the works. That's all this amounts to!

$140 for that? I'd say extortion, but it wouldn't be that high if people didn't pay it... There must be another way.
 
WHY didn't I think of this earlier?

I threw it into VisualHub and told it to export as an mp4 (it already is one... will this work?). It says "About 400 minutes remaining", which makes sense, I guess, because it's 1080p, just under 4GB, and I moved the quality slider to "Go crazy" to try to preserve as much of the quality as possible (it won't preserve anything worth squat, will it?)...

I'd just like to know if this will even work and give me a result that looks remotely like the beauty that was the original file before it broke...
 
Okay, it looks like the video is going to be fixed once it goes through VisualHub, and it still looks great!

The only problem is, from what I can tell from watching it with QuickLook... is that the audio doesn't work.

Now, the audio wouldn't play in VLC earlier... is my audio track borked now?
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
If you put it in VLC, will the audio pop back in?
Click to expand...

You mean, when I get done with the video fixing in VisualHub or with the file as it is right now?

Because I tried the file as it is now... no, that's not quite true.

Okay, RECAP!

Added artwork, iTunes freezing, force quit, yada yada...

QuickTime "bad movie atom" error, won't play there or be added to iTunes...

I put it in VLC and the video played, but the audio didn't.

Tried VisualHub, it said it would be done in 400 minutes...

Then I thought, "Hey! I have Debreaker! I'll try that!" So I stopped the VisualHub encode (which I believe was idiotic). It came back with an error that I'm not going to try to replicate again. It said I was missing a file and it showed the directory to be my desktop. The file's name was all numbers 8xxxx.something... I don't remember.

I put it back in VisualHub and for the past hour and a half it has only said "Starting File 1"... so I don't think I'm getting anywhere. The temp file that it has created, I can open with QuickLook. The parts that are done play video fine, but there is no audio with them.

That's where I am. I now know why no one answers my threads: the questions I ask are for such obscure functions of Mac OS X and its applications that NO ONE would ever come upon them in daily life. :(
 
Do you still have the original file? What is the original file? What is the source of the original file?

Try renaming your *.mp4 to *.m4v and see if it will play in Quicktime.
 
OneFatality said:
Strange.
Click to expand...

Very. Also, I gave up after that last VisualHub error. I'm reencoding from the source and will make a duplicate before I try to add artwork to it in iTunes again. If it fails again, I'll just play it in QuickTime only.

Also, why does it take so frigging long to add artwork to a movie in iTunes? You're copying a tiny image file... This wouldn't have happened if iTunes didn't need to rewrite the entire movie file to add artwork... I'll just let it sit until it's done next time.
 
If you're still up for the re-encoding route, see if Handbrake will give you any luck.

Other than that, maybe try Mplayer?

Also, random question... did the file extension change by any chance when you tried to add artwork to it? Maybe iTunes tried to turn a .mp4 into a .m4v or something along those lines? Have you experimented with changing the extension?
 
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