I have several .WMV videos from around 2004–2006. They play normally in standard video players, but portions of the image become corrupted when the files are imported into video-editing software. The problem is especially obvious around on-screen text, which can become almost unreadable. The glitches appear at the same timestamps in every editor and remain after transcoding to MP4 with Shutter Encoder, even when trying different settings. The only workaround so far is opening the files in an older version of Windows Movie Maker and exporting them in HD. That removes the visible corruption, but sometimes skips or duplicates frames and adds mild compression artifacts. Is there a better way to decode or repair these files while preserving the original frames and quality?
2 Answers
You could try a different conversion frontend, such as VidCoder, and encode directly to H.264 in an MP4 container. If the issue is caused by the editor’s WMV decoder, a completely new decode-and-encode pass may eliminate it.
The source of the WMV files might matter, since older cameras, screen-recording tools, and capture software sometimes produced files that newer decoders interpret differently. I’d try decoding them with VirtualDub or HandBrake, possibly exporting to an AVI intermediate before importing into your editor.
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