Open and convert old Canopus AVIs?

[cy80rg]

Hi all,

I've found a load of old AVI's I created as part of a college project some 20-ish years ago when I was at college.

I cant find anything that can open them - so I've used MediaInfo to see details on the codec, and it looks like they were created using Canopus gear we had at college.

Nothing commercial or pro (I'm an end user who just wants to view some old archived academic content) - is there a way I can a)view these and ideally b) export these into a standard format so I can show them to other people or upload to YT?

Thanks :)

Output from MediaInfo here...

General
Complete name : C:\Users\Charles\Downloads\walking to FG area3.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name : DV
File size : 16.2 MiB
Duration : 1 min 27 s
Overall bit rate : 1 549 kb/s

Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Codec ID : CDVC
Codec ID/Info : Canopus DV (DV)
Codec ID/Hint : Canopus
Duration : 1 min 27 s
Bit rate : 8 000 b/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 5:4
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Standard : PAL
Color space : YUV
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.001
Stream size : 85.5 KiB (1%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 1 min 27 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 16.0 MiB (99%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 995 ms (24.89 video frames)

[THoff]

Try this:

https://www.videohelp.com/software/Canopus-DV-File-Converter

[cy80rg]

Thanks - sadly that didnt work... Didnt do anything at all actually.

As soon as I pointed the tool at the AVI, within a second,it basically came back saying it couldn't open it... seemed a bit too quick to have actually done anything at all TBH...

Am I doing something wrong?

[BernH]

Canopus, Matrox, Pinnacle, and every other PC based system back then used a proprietary way of writing their AVI file, to allow video captures and playback to exceed the file size limitations imposed by the then commonly used FAT32 file system, by allowing the video to be split across multiple AVI's. Normally an AVI file as a file index at the end of every file, but these proprietary methods essentially replace the file index with a pointer to the next sequential file and place the index at the end of the last file in the sequence. Even if there is only one segment, the index portion of the container is not standard, so it doesn't appear as a normal file.

FAT32 as a specification has a maximum file size limit of 4GB, but some of those older Windows builds actually even reduced it further to 2GB. At about 5 minutes per 1GB for your DV footage, you can easily see that the file system limits the duration to 10 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on the implementation of FAT32, so this workaround was a vital one.

I don't have any of these old file types kicking around, but if you are willing to send me a sample or two, I have a couple of ideas I could try. If one of my ideas work, I'll gladly share it with you and the rest of the forum, but without a test file or two, I can make no recommendations of promises.

You can upload the file to this link:

https://shorturl.at/gHMP0

This is a temporary upload only folder I have set up on my home nextcloud server, and the link will expire in 7 days.

[Thor]

cy80org,

Read this forum thread:

https://forum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43791&highlight=reference+file+manager

PM me with your email address, and I will send you the Canopus Reference File Manager Utility. It was written in Japan 20 years ago, but it still works, even in Windows 10.

[BernH]

cy80org,

Read this forum thread:

https://forum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43791&highlight=reference+file+manager

PM me with your email address, and I will send you the Canopus Reference File Manager Utility. It was written in Japan 20 years ago, but it still works, even in Windows 10.

That's great Jon. I'd say that's exactly what is needed.

[Thor]

Attached is the Canopus Reference File Manager Utility

The utility is written with Japanese characters and icons. Don't panic! It is fairly intuitive, and works even in Windows 10, even though it was written many, many years ago by Canopus-Japan software technicians. Just click on the unzipped file, and it will install itself. There are no virus or malware issues.

It's purpose is to find and "re-attach" the 3.99 Gb continuation files to your header file, due to the old problem of the FAT32 file size limitation, particularly with files captured long ago, with cards like the DVStorm, etc.

Hopefully it will work for you. Once you are able to view and edit your old files, you should probably immediately export them to new avi files with no size limitation. Then edit your new (old) files.

[PaperPlayn]

I found this program as well, for converting Canopus .avi files to Premiere-compatible .avis. It doesn't handle reference files perfectly well, and you may need to cobble some workflow together with the Japanese program mentioned above, but it's at least another tool in the bag... I recommend downloading and stashing a copy somewhere.

https://www.videohelp.com/software/Canopus-DV-File-Converter

[Thor]

Thanks for the link!

Regarding the Canopus Reference File Manager Utility a few posts above, about 20 years ago, a fellow from Australia posted on the old Canopus forum that he had worked on a project for weeks and thought it had become corrupted. I shared the Utility with him, and it restored his project! Needless to say, he was thankful, and I was glad to have been of help.