I was just going through some of my stock footage--timelapses created long ago. Probably created on the DV Rex. Now, some of them won't play; Win Media Player says it doesn't have the correct codec. Neither Vegas7 or 9 will load 'em either.

I downloaded Gspot and it says that the codec is already on the computer (Canopus DV codec). Comparing clips, the only difference seems to be that the 16:9 flag is set on the none players.

(Otherwise, they also have 'unneeded bytes at the end of file' and have no audio. But there are playable clips that also have these traits.)

Any ideas on how I can get these clips to play? Change the 16:9 flag? How does one do that?

Thanks,

canopus HARDWARE was the codec decoder for some of that stuff, have you tried to download the Windows playback codec for canopus? cause without the hardware the normal codec will not work without re-wrapping it into like a MS or QT wrapper.
it might be looking For the hardware for the decode, and cant do it without it. when i disable the driver for my canopus dv thing, i ONLY get canopus decoding after installing the winders playback codec. with it re-enabled it hops over to the hardware during the next attachment to the codec (close reopen).

so if I was messing with the old stuff from Rex , i would grab 2 things, the windows canopus playback codec (no cost codec for decode only), and the re-Wrapper utility (registered users no-cost utility). if you already got that, then try sending it to virtual-dub as it is usually capable of peeling off usable parts of a file even when the end is broken.

it is less likly to do with a aspect flag, because the base resolution was the same, although that could be a "header" item that gets misread by some stuff.