Damaged DSLR MOV files after retrieval

[Moali75]

Hi

I am trying to repair some DSLR .MOV files that i retrieved from an SD Card. After my card seemed to have been wiped with no files on it, i retrieved 14gig of files using card recovery applications. Now the files i have recovered, but they wont play in any player. I have even run them through the various video repair tools available for purchase, but none of them can repair the video. I have tried nearly all of the HD video repair tools now i am ready to give up!

The ONE tool that DID work is www.MP4repair.org - if you upload a file to their website, it converts it online and it plays back a sample preview and it looks perfect - so surely that proves that the files can be saved?! But the cost of using them to convert my files comes to $5000 !!! I have 125 files to convert!

Can anyone please have a look at the damaged files which i have uploaded 2 of here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/saedg5hovotph6v/8bzOkILZSk

Can anyone get them working? It would be really really appreciated if anyone could tell me how i can save my 125 files of HD video!

They were shot in a Canon 5D by the way.

Many thanks

Mo Ali

[Baldrick]

You could also try graus video repair tool and see how it works. Try the trial first. You load the damaged file and then a working one. Scan and check the repaired folder. If it works it might be worth buying.

[Moali75]

Thanks. But have tried that already, doesnt seem to work... maybe i'm doing something wrong, didn't work for me. And i'm ready to buy an software if it works, but so far none have worked for me.

[Baldrick]

Can you post a short working mov file from same camera?

So I also can test video repair tool. It has worked fine for me before...but mostly with mp4 files then.

[Moali75]

Thanks so much. Here is the file attached of a working video from the same camera.... thanks so much

[Baldrick]

Nope, it failed. Just some green crap in VLC media player.

I don't know any other simple mov repair tools.

[Moali75]

its insane, only one that works so far is mp4repair.org but i'm not prepared to pay $5000 though!! ! thanks for trying though

[Cornucopia]

I would suggest that maybe

...i retrieved 14gig of files using card recovery applications.

might not be entirely accurate then.

As I mentioned in a recent previous thread: just because some app told you you had recovered a file doesn't mean:
1. It really did, nor
2. It recovered THE file(s) in question, nor
3. That it is the complete, pristine original version of the file

A LOT depends on which recovery app you used and its methods & algorithms of recovery, WHERE you chose to save the "recovered" file (NEVER use the original media!), whether the app or you affected IN ANY WAY the existing data on the corrupted media. This is from the time that the media was OK, to now and beyond, to the time that you know you've successfully gotten all the files you wanted.

One should always verify, with playback by a full-featured & self-contained media player (VLC, MPC-HC) and also with MediaInfo (or Gspot) and even with a hex dump to view the raw bits. ONLY THEN will you know your media is OK.

And even then, I would suggest that you use an editor to remux into a new, clean container file (so you don't end up with extra junk).

Scott

<edit>BTW, for *.MOV files, one should be making use of Quicktime Player to verify, regardless of your normal preferences.

[FireRouteR]

Hello Ali,

Seems you did not get how MP4repair.org work. Cost it's not $ 39 x 125 files. You have a cart and quote is dynamically calculated based on the amount of files included and the minutes that those files represent. So overall I would assume about 60 minutes of footage what should be just $180 (and not $5000!).

Give it a new try simply adding all your files at once (there's a Quickly add files button). That would do the trick. Best of luck!

Regards,
--Fire

UPDATE: Please find here direct link to your repaired clips (obtained as suggested using MP4repair.org service).

[racer-x]

As Cornucopia already said, try another file recovery program. PCI FileRecovery has always worked well for me and it's free. Another one you can try is ZAR DiskRecovery.

[Cornucopia]

Well, comparing one damaged file with the known good tells me a few things:
1. The ending of the damaged file doesn't look all that damaged, just the beginning.
2. A better recovery app probably could have done a better job.
3. You would have to do a bit of trial & error, but taking the beginning bytes of the good file (through "mdat") and prepending it to the bad file which has already had its beginning lopped off (up to ~ around 0002D010), you ought to be able to get SOMETHING recognizable from it.
Note however, that the other metadata may be inaccurate ("length of track" etc) which will continue to corrupt your file until you either copy & paste the recoverable video into a new container, or use a video-based recovery tool which recognizes & analyzes the QT atoms and can repair them based on what is still available.

So, there still could be a lot of work to do. Is it worth it? Or would it be easier to re-shoot?

Scott