BleepingComputer.com: USB breaking video files?

I'm actually not sure where the problem is so full story...

I bought a Philips 5990 dvd player with USB slot, and a 64g flash drive off of ebay. The dvd player plays dvds, just fine, so I suspect the issue is with the USB.

When first plugging it in my computer popped up threat detected, I healed it and then my computer was prompting "open with..." when I tried to open the USB drive to drag and drop files. I right clicked hit "explore" and deleted the autorun file. After doing this my computer recognized it as H:// and opened it fine.

I dragged a movie in (.avi playable by the dvd player) it transferred fine. I plugged into the dvd player and it played fine, for about 20 minutes and then it froze. Thinking perhaps it was the movie I tried another, same story. So I tried playing the movie from the USB on my computer to see if it would play, VLC prompted broken AVI. I did check the original movies in my computer to see if they played before being put on the USB.. they do. So I think somehow moving or copying the movies onto the USB drive is "breaking" them hence they play normally in the dvd player until they hit a certain point and freeze up from missing data.

Anyone know what causes this and how to fix it?

Can i ask you how much you paid for this usb memory? and did it come from China? As it could be 'Fake Flash' thats been hacked to look 64gb but is actually 8gb.

http://fakeflashnews.wordpress.com/2009/07...ghts-the-fraud/

http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/

http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/

$38.00

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=280504000321

It was from the US and he has other positive feedback for the same product.

Edit: I'm downloading this check program in the link.. we'll know in 5 hours if your right damn.. that's a long check test lol

This post has been edited by unwirklich: 20 May 2010 - 01:25 PM

Ah... crap.. looking at your links though some of those photos are identical to the item I purchased, but the movies I was trying to play are under 8 gb?

It is a long test, but at least you can then either know or rule it out.

As for looking the same, a lot of them are physically identical to a genuine product so it's not really an indication.

I'll have my fingers crossed for you

It came back faulty :| It didn't say how large the drive actually was but at least I know to open a buyer's dispute now. Garg who knew buying a stupid flash drive was so complicated.

Thanks for the help.

The price should have been an indication that, "Something's not right, about this."
$38 for a 64 GB drive?

Reputable manufacturers charge anywhere from $150 - $225, for a 64 GB drive.

The old adage, "If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is", applies here.

I hope you're able to get your money back.

I'm sorry to hear that unwirklich, i was stung with a fake 32gb Mp3 player(was only 4gb) so i know the feeling.

As for the true size of your USBdrive, did the 'H2testw 1.4' not give you a report, saying at what point errors started to occur? as this indicates the actual size.

I hope you manage to get your money back,

Good Luck!

As for the should have known comment.. it was no reserve ebay auction.. it isn't uncommon for items worth a lot to go for a little in this way.

The seller actually responded promptly and refunded my full purchase and apologized. Probably because I told him i was reporting him for selling illegal goods. The test never finished, it said the drive needed to be formatted which my computer was unable to do, and the test said ..this...

"Warning: Only 63284 of 63984 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
0 KByte OK (0 sectors)
435 MByte DATA LOST (890880 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
435 MByte corrupted (890880 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x0000000000000000
Expected: 0x0000000000000000
Found: 0xffffffffffffffff
H2testw version 1.3"

Before freezing... so I assumed it was bad and stopped screwing with it. The seller said I could keep it, so maybe I'll try some more when I'm bored.

Looking at those results, it would seem that it's not a fake size and that it is actually 64gb, but it is corrupted. I've tried fixing a corrupt USBmemory before and didn't succeed. If it had been a fake size you could of fixed it to it's propper size.

One idea though, don't know if it will work but might make it usable...
It seems that only a small part is corrupt(453mb), the problem is that you don't know where on the drive the corruption is.
I was thinking that if you started filling up the drive with movies and using it, when you came across a corrupt movie you could change it's name to say 'corrupt' and leave it on the drive. This would then presumably cover the the corrupt area and the rest of the space could be used normally.
Still...even if this did work, i wouldn't trust the drive with anything important.

This post has been edited by 666philb: 21 May 2010 - 07:07 AM

Hmm well now I can't even open it. It asks me to format it and I can't seem to get it to do that no matter how I try. If I leave settings as is it doesn't even give me a way to format all fields are blank. If I go in an change the settings from optimal to performance it allows me to try NTFS but always fails.

Helpful for anyone who finds this thread with the same issue, USB that won't format:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...mp;#entry100661

Program was fully automated I just hit buttons and the drive is formatted and opens now.

Wow.. it also is playing back video fine on my computer now. No more AVI broken. Final test.. the dvd player. I kinda feel like a dick now, I made the seller give me a refund and I think I just fixed it.

This post has been edited by unwirklich: 21 May 2010 - 05:40 PM

Interesting. It did the same thing before in the dvd player but at a different point (stopped) and then when I bring it back to the computer .. now I'm getting the AVI broken again. Is it possible the DVD player is corrupting the video files somehow?

At no point did I say, you "should have known".
That's not possible, until you actually get the product, and try it out.

The point I was trying to get across was, you need to be very cautious when dealing with anything, that sounds like an unbelievable deal.

Caveat emptor. (Let the buyer beware)

If your computers USB ports don't cause corruption in the movies, but the DVD player's port does, there's a definite possibility the fault is in the DVD players port.

Quote

Possibly a short, causing an interruption in the transfer of information.

Should have known was just the tone I got from the post lol I agree though, I admit I was well aware I was taking a risk bidding on the item.

If it's a short am I basically just screwed on using the usb port of the dvd player? Is there anyway to test that as being the issue?

Edit update:

I tried adding a second movie on the usb and playing it without trying it in the dvd first, and vlc said,

"VLC can't recognize the input's format:
The format of 'H:\The.Boondock.Saints.II.All.Saints.Day.2009.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON\The.Boondock.Saints.II.All.Saints.Day.2009.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON.English.srt' cannot be detected. Have a look at the log for details.
VLC can't recognize the input's format:
The format of 'H:\The.Boondock.Saints.II.All.Saints.Day.2009.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON\The.Boondock.Saints.II.All.Saints.Day.2009.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-ViSiON.English2.srt' cannot be detected. Have a look at the log for details."

I can't find the log they speak of, but it's a new result so..

This post has been edited by unwirklich: 21 May 2010 - 06:44 PM

So your saying, you tried another movie, without using the DVD USB port, at all, and you still get errors?
If that's the case, I'd say it was the flash drive that's bad.
Do you have another flash drive, that you can use for testing?

I believe you have to have logging enabled in VLC, for it to create a log file.
Settings / Preferences / Interface / Control Interface / Logging


Just watched Boondock Saints.
Loved it.
I'm hoping All Saints Day, is as good.