Problems playing video...

[Gogeta70]

Hey guys. A friend of mine sent me a video that's about 15 minutes long. However, when i try and play it, the media player says 'Total time: 7 seconds'. When it reaches 7 seconds, the sound part of the video continues, but the video freezes. I've tried playing the video in Real player, Windows media player, Winamp, Quicktime, and DivX. Any ideas on what's going on and how to fix it?

(to me, it sounds like the video is 'layered')

[xtheblack9x]

what format? does it need a special codec?

[DNR]

Bad download, Just because you have a file, it doesn't mean it was a complete download. If the video is 15 minutes long, it should be a very large file - how big is the file? A 15 minute film could be about 15 to 30mb.

DNR

[Gogeta70]

It was MPEG, it's 102 megabytes.

Edit: I forgot to mention that if i move the slider to the 5 second mark, or anywhere around there, sometimes it skips to a scene later in the video.

[bad_brain]

yeah,sounds like a damaged file....you could try to cut the mpeg into pieces and check if the single parts are playable....maybe just the the header is damaged and by cutting it into pieces every part would get a new header...
get mpeg splitter from the downloads and check your PM for some details...*coughs*
there is also a program called mpeg header corrector, but I have no idea if it´s good or not because I´ve never used it:
http://www.videohelp.com/download/MPEG-Corrector.zip

[Gogeta70]

The mpeg header corrector didn't work, and i got that mpeg splitter program... that didn't do the trick either.

[bad_brain]

well, then you can kick the file into the bucket...as far as I know there is no possibility to repair more than the header...

[Gogeta70]

I just converted the file to AVI, and now the whole thing plays... >.>
I find that a bit strange, but whatever works.

PS: By the way, like the new sig?