No video (black) but audio is okay

[ken]

Hello. Using Mac OS 10.9.5. Video DownloadHelper 6.0 on Firefox 50.1.0.

When I download a video from a site that I subscribe to, the video is just black (i.e. no video) but the audio seems to be okay. The source is hosted on Vimeo and is segmented (.m4s). Any ideas?

Thank you.

[stri...@gmail.com]

I'm having the same problem so i tried playing the files in Media Player( windows) instead of videolan & they played fine..
 I suspect the latest videolan update is causing this trouble, i think i've set mine to auto updates..i'd hate to have to use media player...lol

[ken]

I'm on a Mac, but I tried playing it in both QuickTime and VLC. Same result. I am attaching a pic from VLC of the Codec Details.

[mig]

Could you get a small video with the issue (like < 150MB) and post it to http://expirebox.com/ or an equivalent service ?

[jd]

Perhaps this info will help.
I use vlc to play.  I get no video, but just audio.
However, when I look at the MP4 using "MediaInfo" , the usual MPEG-4 (Base Media /Version 2) does not "usually" display, but "iso5" does (whatever that is). 

If you load the videofile into Avidemux 2.5.4  you can see the video, and the video&audio will play if you DO NOT rebuild frames. (Otherwise it crashes)

If loaded into Avidemux 2.6.16 you get a rather long import message ending in "drop timing informations?" The audio and video play without problem inside avidemux 2.6.16 AND if you save the video&audio using just the copy feature (after dropping the timing information)  you get a fully playable file. 

So all the data is there, its may just be the timing info causing a problem.
I have noticed that if I try to download more than one vim video at a time, the problem is almost guaranteed to occur.
But, changing to 1 concurrent downloads (from 4) does not seem to affect the frequency of the problem.

[ken]

Thank you for the info jd. I don't really know how to load something from SourceForge, but I'm on Mac only anyhow so it really wouldn't help. I will try looking at the things you describe though. As for posting a sample file mig, I don't really want to post copyrighted video so if you can point me to another DASH video on Vimeo that might give me the same result, I could try that. (I have permission from the copyright holder to download these videos -- he suggested it to me...)

[mig]

You can try this video in 480x270 https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/139480129

Send the expirebox.com link using "Reply privately to the author".

[mig]

Thanks for the link (sent separately).

Do you confirm you cannot see the video from this file (MD5 signature 8e3015552a2aaab375ba55561a9c6d75) ?

I tried it on:

• Linux
• mplayer OK
  
• vlc OK
  
• parole OK
  
• totem OK
  
• Windows 10
• vlc OK
  
• windows media player OK
  
• Mac
• quicktime: a little choppy, which is a known issue, but viewable
  
• vlc did not work (open gl failure) but i think this is related to my setup (Mac OS X running in a virtual machine)
  
• mplayer OK
  

[Gary V]

I'm having this same issue using DH 6.2.0 with Firefox 50.1.0.

I've uploaded a 14.4 MB MP4 created by DH to expirebox.com. Here's the download link:

https://expirebox.com/download/ff9300028eec7f8cf3b83601e43cbb96.html

[mig]

Thanks. We could already see (from another video posted to expirebox) that the video file was missing some piece of information (codec details). Now what we are missing is a link to a vimeo video page where that kind of bogus video file can be downloaded.

[ken]

Any update on this? I still cannot seem to download these DASH videos successfully. Thanks...

[mig]

Please check thread https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/mLjR22w6jVE for an update on the issue.

[ken]

Thank you. Just tried it and video does appear now, though it's choppy. I understand that I need to convert it. I'll try when I get home since I can't install homebrew on my work computer. But I'll assume the problem is now solved. Thank you.

[mig]

An alternative to the choppy video on Mac is to use VLC or mplayer to play the video instead of QuickTime.