Samsung Camera Videos in OS X

My relatively new Samsung sports camcorder rocks the proverbial house. The thing is so small, solid and generally usable that I’m amazed it ever has time to charge.

That being said, we’ve had a hell of a time with converting its videos (which are .AVI DIVX files) into something usable on our Macs. Thus far, I’d been unable to convert the videos using any of the standard tools (DivX Toll, DivX Doctor II, etc.), and had been using iSquint - which works where Quicktime had not - to export the videos in .MOV.

I’ll still use iSquint, but it’s going to be for iPod conversions only…thanks to the solution below.

I took a few minutes and sent the following email to a lesser geek buddy of mine. You might find it helpful.

Yo -

I just discovered a much better way to convert the videos you shoot
with your Samsung video camera.

iSquint works pretty well, but it’s really more intended for
converting videos to be iPod-friendly.

This new method keeps the original file size, shape and resolution.
You can always export for iPod when you’ve done something in iMovie.

First step: change the recording mode in the camera options of your
camera from TV to PC. Leave it there.

Second step: download hexedit for OSX here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hexedit

Once you’ve copied your camera movies (*.AVI) over to your hard drive,
open one of them in HexEdit. Leave the settings as “auto”.

It’ll open up a bunch of stuff that’ll look like garbage to you. Don’t
worry, this is hexadecimal representation of the file’s code. If you
look on the right side, you’ll see the letters “SEDG” twice: once on
row 70 (usually), and again on row B0. You want to replace each
instance (there are only two) of “SEDG” with the letters “DIVX”. Using
the Apple-F (Find) command has an option for Replace, so it simplifies
things a tad. Be aware that doing the “Replace All” command will take
a few seconds, as large video files have a ton of lines…I find it
quicker to “Find” then “Replace” twice for each file.

Save the file, close it, and try to open it; it should open in QT by
default. If it plays, we’re golden.

There may be some DIVX codecs that you don’t have installed….but
that’s super simple. Let me know if this doesn’t get your videos
playing.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably notice that you’ve got a new
file called YOURFILE.AVI~, and the original called YOURFILE.AVI. This
is HexEdit automatically creating a backup of your file. Once you’ve
got things rolling smoothly here, you can turn off “Create Backups” in
the options menu of HexEdit, and it’ll no longer create those files
with the ~ at the end. You can also delete those files once your’e
satisfied. In the event that something goes terribly wrong, you can
restore the ~ files before deleting them.

Essentially, Windows recognizes that SEDG nonsense…even though it’s
not standard. We know that the Samsung cameras are encoding in DIVX
format, so we’re just circumventing the weak attempt at further
Windows monopoly. :P
Tip: If you’ve got a bunch of files to modify, select them all in a
Finder window, and right click (ctrl-click), select Open With, choose
Other, and select HexEdit. It’ll open all of the files in stacked
windows.

Enjoy!

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Apple, General Computer Stuff, iPods and Music Comments 6 Oct 14th, 2006

6 Responses to “Samsung Camera Videos in OS X”

  1. john Says:
    December 3rd, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    thank you so much for this information. How could it be that a large company like Samsung would not take the time to address the MAC community in their product line. Your help is very well appreciated!

  2. Tim Says:
    December 3rd, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    It’s a good point. I’ve always been disappointed with the lac of OS X support by companies like Samsung.

    Fortunately, the Mac community is pretty large, and full of bright people. We’ll continue to find workarounds like this one; at least, until Macs are as commonplace as PCs. :)

  3. Jesse Andrews Says:
    December 22nd, 2006 at 8:05 pm

    a friend had the same problem and I wrote a simple app called “deSEDG” to do the hex editing for you - http://www.overstimulate.com/projects/deSEDG/

    hope this helps!

    ja

  4. Diana Says:
    January 20th, 2007 at 6:25 am

    I just want to say a huge thank you. What a frustrating thing this was. And after trying a million things, this was the only way i could make this work. Genius!

  5. Ross Mckenzie Says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 10:37 am

    All sounds positive, but will deSEDG’d clips be compatible with iMovie? I ended up writing a script to de-sedg, then convert via ffmpeg, then import to iPhoto (and by inference, iMovie). I am hoping I’ve overdone it!

    Would be wonderful if this will allow iMovie compatible clips directly.

    rm

  6. Tim Says:
    June 14th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    Ross -

    For what it’s worth, I’ve found that the deSDG function isn’t need anymore on my machine, and that clips from the Samsung not only work natively in QT, but also in iMovie. I SUSPECT that Perian is responsible, though I can’t pinpoint it…

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