Problems with the Media File

Closed Captioning with CaptionSync can be affected by the type of encoding of your media files. This article shows some troubleshooting tips.

When uploading your media file you may see some of the following error messages:

This can happen in a number of cases, like for example where there are multiple audio tracks in the MOV.

The easiest thing to do is within QuickTime Player (you will need to upgrade to QuickTime Pro and if you're on the Mac use Player 7, not QuickTime X) File → Export… → Sound to Wave, (16 kHz, 16 bits, mono) then either submit that WAV or convert to MP3 and submit.

This can happen when the WMV header is corrupt. We have seen this occur from files coming directly out of an appliance from Vbrick. The fix is to transcode the file to a new WMV, using a genuine Windows program.

This can happen in the case where there is no audio track.

Typically this means that your media file is corrupt or contains no audio. Please see these tips for handling audio issues.

We have only seen this occur due to corrupt WMV files coming out of an appliance from vBrick. As mentioned above, the fix is to transcode the file to a new WMV, using a genuine Windows program.

This means that your media file is corrupt.

This can happen in various cases, often where there are multiple audio tracks of different names pasted together in the MOV.

Within QuickTime Player 7 (you will need to upgrade to QuickTime Pro and if you're on the Mac use Player 7, not QuickTime X) File → Export… → Sound to Wave, (16 kHz, 16 bits, mono) then either submit that WAV or convert to MP3 and submit.

Your media file is sampled at less than 8 kHz which represents very poor audio. This sometimes happens with audio recorded on some handheld recorders, but would almost never happen in any professional or computer recorded audio. So if you have access to the original media which was recorded at 8 kHz or more, take the audio from there. Do not simply try to “upsample” the poor audio because, although that be accepted into our system due to it higher sampling rate, the underlying audio is poor and will not likely yield a good synchronization.

Your audio appears to have less than 8 bits/sample which represents very poor audio. This sometimes happens with audio recorded on some handheld recorders, but would almost never happen in any professional or computer recorded audio. So if you have access to the original media which was recorded at 8 bits/sample (preferable 16 bits/sample), take the audio from there.

This means that your media file is corrupt or you are experiencing one of the issues discussed for QuickTime or Windows Media under ERROR: Unrecognized file format. Please see that item above for remedies…

You either need to shorten up your media file or add more credits to the prepay balance.

If you submitted an MOV you created in SnapZ Pro X and then edited in QuickTime Pro but it shows a duration longer than expected, you've encountered a QuickTime bug.

Here's what you should do to fix it:

1. Cancel the submission (otherwise you will be billed for the entire duration including the silence added at the end)
2. Go into QuickTime Pro and export your edited file to a new MOV (or M4V, or MP4 if you wish). This will force QuickTime to create a new timeline from which audio can be extracted correctly (and it will make a smaller MOV file since the edited pieces will be removed)
3. Submit the new MOV