recovering corrupted mp4 files

[ashame03]

Hi everyone,
I'm pretty new at a lot of this computer stuff, so don't laugh at my absurd questions, but if someone can help me out, I would REALLY appreciate it.

Here's the story:
I was at an awesome concert and recording video with my Mino HD videorecorder. During the concert I ran out of time on the recorder, so I went back, deleted some previous (boring) videos, and recorded over them.

Then, I came home and was uploading the videos to FlipShare. I accidentally only highlighted one to import to FlipShare, and all of the rest were not only NOT uploaded to FlipShare, but also deleted from my camera. Perfect. I almost cried.

So, I used the free program "Recuva" to try to recover the files. I got about half of them back. The other half I can actually SEE, but they do not play on iTunes, FlipShare, Windows Media Player, etc. HELP!

I guess I have two questions:
1. Is there a better, free, safe video recovery program that I might use?
2. Is there a way to fix the half of the files that are corrupted (at least I'm assuming that's the problem)?

ANY HELP you can give would be SO wonderful. And I don't mean to be pushy, but the sooner the better. You would be my hero.

Thanks,
Ash

[intracube]

I accidentally only highlighted one to import to FlipShare, and all of the rest were not only NOT uploaded to FlipShare, but also deleted from my camera. Perfect. I almost cried.

So, I used the free program "Recuva" to try to recover the files. I got about half of them back. The other half I can actually SEE, but they do not play on iTunes, FlipShare, Windows Media Player, etc. HELP!

Just to confirm; are you trying to recover the files directly from the memory of your Mino HD?

2. Is there a way to fix the half of the files that are corrupted (at least I'm assuming that's the problem)?

What is the filesize of the videos you managed to recover? Also, roughly how long in minutes should they be?

EDIT: Also, if you want to try to retrieve the files again with other software - it's important not to record anything else to the memory; as this may permanently overwrite the files you're trying to recover.

[Bjs]

Two related links are:

1: Forum post 326290
2: Use of hex editing guide

Hex editor ... Hxd (free)

Open two instances ... in the first open a working mov ... in the second instance open the non-playable

If in the non-playable file you appear to have "symbol" characters ... smiley faces, european pound symbol , ect ... and there's a heap ... then the file is considered unrecoverable due to data corruption ... of course some recovery programs are better than others ... Active @ Undelete ... if it cannot recover the file in working condition then nothing else will.

If the unplayable file appears similar to the working file then you might be just lucky enough the one or more of the moov atom's are incorrectly spelled ... use the search feature to locate the atom's by type and check for correctness ... save file and try play.

And welcome ashame03