Can you repair full avi files

[oldie3328]

I captured a while ago 6 tapes from a camcorder.
They were my vacation tapes from the vacation to the usa. Sadly enough I don't have the tapes and the files, original avi (720-576) have been damaged because of a external hard drive which did his job not good. Now I see colorfull blocks in the video, springing from one place to another.
Are there ways to repair this?
I hope someone can help me, the files are about 12-14 GB each!

Erik from the Netherlands

[guns1inger]

Chances are that you cannot do much with them. Some problems, such as damaged indexes, can be fixed. Yours sounds like data corruption in the video stream. You could try Digital Video repair on a copy of one of the files to see if it can help, but I would be prepared for the worst.

I know it's too late this time, but it should be a lesson to anyone who shoots on tape - keep the tapes as your archive. Tapes are cheap and small. No need to tape over them.

[Soopafresh]

"Now I see colorfull blocks in the video, springing from one place to another.
Are there ways to repair this?"

Did you store them close to a speaker or a magnet?

The only way I can think of getting rid of the blocks is to convert your video to black and white.