recovered avi's won't play

[veger045]

I had an external drive I was backing up all my data to and it stopped working correctly and only shows some of the folders that were there. I used active file recovery to get my data back and now I have the files but the avi's won't seem to play.

I've tried playing them in mplayer and vlc, I've also tried various programs such as avimaster, mediacoder, digital video repair and media info all seem to load the file and recognize there is data there but won't recognize it as a video.

Any suggestions would be greatfully appreciated

[redwudz]

Drop one in MediaInfo and see what it says. Post a screen shot here. What you may have is just the 'shell' of the file and no real data within it. Or if you are lucky, just the header information is corrupted and the data may still be there.

If you still have the drive in the same conditon, maybe a different data recovery program might work better. Some one here probably can suggest ones to try.

And welcome to our forums.

[veger045]

this is all it showed when I loaded a file. when I load another file that I know works it gives me alot more information

[redwudz]

Your screen shot didn't work. You might look here for tips: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic271697.html

[mail2tom]

Unfortunately his screen shot probably did work, and what it shows is that that MediaInfo doesn't find anything that resembles the file structure of an AVI.

Having "been there-done that," I'd suggest that you get a new drive and transfer any recovered files to the new drive and test them for completeness. If you're lucky some of the recovered files will be 100 percent. Then retire the defective drive because it could have logical, physical, or controller damage.

[veger045]

sorry it did work but it was cmyk not rgb my default settings are cmyk. I've already used active file recovery and it's the recovered files that don't work