Video shot on XA, but none of my players on my PC can play it

[Schmitzenstein]

Hello, I am new to Xperia phones, formerly an iphone guy. Anyway, I dig this little phone and the video camera on the phone is great. I am using my XPERIA XA to shoot video clips, but no players on my PC can recognize these files. Not only that, I have Corel Videostudio 9 as well as Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13 and none of these programs recognize these video files either Says unknown format. But they play fine on the XPERIA phone. Do these phones use some sort of proprietary codec that I am unable to use the clips in my video productions? Or is it sonmething simpler? This is so frustrating, the videos from my iphones played and popped right into all my editing programs    I really want to shoot video with this phone, but if I can't edit it in my mainstream video editors on my PC, it is pointless.

[Schmitzenstein]

P.S. I have tried Media player, VLC, WIN 10 "TV and VIDEO" player, etc. But it's more about being able to use these clips in my editors. I am quite surprised that even the former Sony-branded Vegas software cannot even read the files??

[Parou]

There seems to be something wrong with your phone or sd card (probably corrupting the video file while transferring it from your sd card to another storage).

I just recorded a video with my XA, because I didn't test this thing yet.

It's a perfectly fine *.mp4 that can be played and opened by any up-to-date media player and video editing software (tried with any media player and video editing software that I have installed)

Edit: What you could do:

Try to upload a video to google drive or another cloud- / filesharing service and download it on your PC. Try to open the file. If it works, fine. It's your sd card or even your PC that corrupts the data while transferring it via USB.

Try to change your sd card to another one or the path to save video files to internal storage and try again.

If it doesn't work, you could try to backup all your internal data and reset your phone to factory settings and try the whole thing again. If it still doesn't work, your whole phone is probably not okay*.

*Same goes for the case if you already are saving video files to internal storage.

[Schmitzenstein]

I dont have an SD card, I transfered the video by connecting the xperia to the PC, and just moving the files from the phone to the PC.

Thank you for your response. If you think it may be a defective phone, that is possible because you have verified video files from your XA personally. this is so odd.  But the photos are fine to transfer and every other phone feature seems to work, just that the video files appear corrupted. I will test further I guess

[Parou]

Maybe you could try to clear the cache and data of the camera app in Settings -> Apps -> Camera.

I don't know if that would have any effect at all, but it wouldn't hurt to try it.

It's really weird if it's only affecting the video files.

Also, maybe try another camera app to record videos. That would probably tell you if it's a hardware- or software (with the default camera app itself) issue.

[Schmitzenstein]

Update: OK, the full HD setting on the camera produces files that play on the camera, but not the PC. However, the HD setting on the camera (720p) files DO work when transferred. So do the files shot at the VGA (although they look awful) setting. It is not the PC, I have tried 3 now. Sooooo...unless Sony acknowledges this actually is an issue, it looks like 720p is the best this phone is going to give me.

[Schmitzenstein · Accepted solution]

Well, I did a test. Shot a similiar 25 second clip on every quality setting ot the phone, and for HD and FULL HD, I shot a clip each with the HDR switch on and each off. Anyway, seems to be working fine now. I assembled all the clips in Corel and created a final piece. Only difference is I just imported the files into my PC via normal windows file moving this time. Thank you for responses, much appreciated.