Restoring Deleted AVI file from digital camera

[vroom_vroom]

Hello All,

I deleted a 20 minute movie I made with my Casio Digital Camera. I used a piece of software called CardRecovery to try and recover the avi file from my camera. I was able to do so, however the recovered AVI won't play any video.

I can hear the audio, so I know I have recovered the right file. However for video I see a brief 2 second video shot of another avi I had on the same sd card, but NO image of the avi I want to recover.

I know I have to be so close to recovering this file, as I can hear the file and the recovered file plays for correct length of time. Just no video!!

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thank you!

[vroom_vroom]

Also to add, from what I can discern what's happening to my recovered file is this:

The first 2 seconds are of an avi that exists on my sd card.

Then the image cuts out.

The remaining 22 minutes of the file are all audio from the deleted avi that I am trying to recover. No video though.

[guns1inger]

Honestly, I suspect you are screwed. We have had many posts from people who have been in this situation and found that the file recovery tools have given them at best partial results, and at worst, garbage. What appears to have happened in your case is that it has retrieved some of the file you wanted, mixed from part of at least one other file that had probably been deleted in the past. More than likely the video data is not in the file created by the recovery tool, in which case you have nothing to work with.

When you recovered the file, did you recover it to the card, or to some other storage ?

If you recovered back to the card it was on then you may have made matters worse because you will have over-written what was on the card, making further recovery virtually impossible. If you did not write back to the card, and have not written anything else to the card since deleting this file, I would try an alternate recovery tool.

However from what I have seen, both here and in practice, they provide very little real, practical hope.

[vroom_vroom]

Well luckily I did use a program that restored to my computer's hard drive and didn't do anything to the digital camera's memory card.

So I guess I'm confused....if the audio file is so clearly there, why would the video portion get deleted by the camera? Its a 4GB card and I have plenty of space on it still?

Thanks for the insight!