I’m trying to download some mp4 files via qbittorrent but most of them don’t play. I have no reason to assume that the source is broken, is there perhaps something I am doing wrong or some way to fix it? I’m getting the “moov atom not found” error even though the file is at 100%. The whole torrent isn’t at 100% yet, but I enabled sequential downloading. It’s really big and I don’t want to download it all if it won’t work.

  • Brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    I’m getting the “moov atom not found” error even though the file is at 100%. The whole torrent isn’t at 100% yet, but I enabled sequential downloading.

    Either the .mp4 is corrupt, or you need to wait for the torrent itself to finish 100% complete.

    You are downloading in sequential mode, and it sounds like these .mp4 files were generated with the moov atom at the end of the file. Which means the file is cut off at the very end (aka corrupt) or the torrent itself just never finished downloading the last pieces of that .mp4 file.

    At least that’s how I’m understanding your question… you’re saying the file is at 100% but you’re also saying the torrent isn’t at 100%, to me that sounds like there’s torrent pieces missing to complete the rest of the .mp4 file maybe.

    EDIT: Just to add, technically encoding software can write that moov atom at the beginning of the .mp4 file which would avoid this problem entirely but it sounds like these files you’re downloading aren’t encoded that way. In encoding software usually that means “optimizing” the file or making it “web” ready for a web browser to play immediately as it downloads sequentially… I forget what ffmpeg calls it specifically.

    EDIT 2: Thinking about it, if you’re desperate to play this file as-is maybe you can run it through ffmpeg to create a new .mp4 file and then play it that way. It’s not a real fix since the original source seems to be broken but you may be able to get something playable at least.