Repairing/Fixing .mov ideas or help with hexedit

[Jabus]

Hey everyone,

First time poster, but have lurked around here for a bit. Thought I'd shoot over a post here to see if anyone can help guide me in the right direction. I've been trying many, many things to repair/restore a .MOV file(s). But it's not going quite as well as I'd like/hope.

Relevant Information:

In terms of programs I've tried are: VLC, SMPlayer, gSpot, Virtualdub, and countless other convertors/tools that could possibly repair. After some reading I found out the header might be corrupted, so I attempted using MasterSplitter to cut the file in pieces of 50kb, 161kb, 1Mb, 2Mb, 5Mb, however no luck after I join it together with a replaced header. I tried splicing to replace a possible footer as well, also no luck.

I downloaded HexEdit and had a read through these links:
http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/mpeg-4files.html
http://echoone.com/filejuicer/formats/mov-repair

Now it hurts, because I don't have a program like Dumpster to help me out, but I did go through the files somewhat (they are relatively large so I skimmed through looking for the key atoms. The header seems fine especially when I compare it to some 4 second clips I recorded using the same settings.

I found this topic: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/hexediting-corrupted-mov-file-please-t375758.html

Which is where I got the previous links from, it was pretty helpful and I've learned quite a bit, but I don't seem to be making any progress. In particular I don't notice a footer. Even in the correct video I can't seem to spot a pattern that would indicate it is coming to a close, perhaps I was just expecting something similar to the original posters footer.

I ended up taping another 4 seconds segment to compare it to the 2 working clips to see if I could find where a footer might start but I don't see anything noticeable. So perhaps it's not the footer. I have considered paying for the repair through some company, but in all honest it's not just one file and I am taking a Computer Systems degree course so I should be able to understand how to do this. I'm hoping someone with experience might be able to guide me with the hex editing, or perhaps if someone has some other suggestions, but I imagine there is no fixall tool out there as I have done quite some googling in that respect.

Less Relevant Background Information:

So how did they get corrupted? I was on a 14 day hike remote area and I brought my flip Kodak Zi8 Camcorder. On day 7 we were taking footage of some waterfalls/river area, after taking the footage I put it in my shirt pocket without buttoning it and on the next jump across a rock I dropped the entire thing into the water. It sat there for about 20 minutes (I dug deep through the frigid water to recover it). Of course since I wasn't done destroying the electronics I left it in the blistering sun the next 2 days to dry. The good news is it did turn on and it was seemingly still recording.

The video files after day 7 are all corrupt, however, since returning home, I swapped a card and it worked fine, i swapped the old card back in and it records fine. All the corrupt videos have varying sizes 30mb-160mb so the information is seemingly there. So while I'm lucky to have saved 7 days of footage I would love to restore/fix the other 7 days and I'm willing to read, try, and learn anything I can to get these going. I also have plenty of time on my hands and am in no rush to recover the videos so patience isn't a factor.

Anyway, let me know if anyone can help, I have my fingers crossed. Cheers.

[Bjs]

Ah ... Them things ... I should have remarked to the other one their original header had a few missing characters at the start ... and in the lower snaps they were not in the same location ... 96 and 9c are not identical locations.

Anyway, you can take a look at this link where someone has worked on cycorder mov problem and seems to have a working process ... their explanation however dose take a lot ... emphasizing on "know what your looking for" ... and having a valid moov_template for the particular camera at fault in order to use their script ... worth a shot.

I did spend quite a bit of time studying apple's extensive doc's on atom's and the structure ... so if you want a second opinion you should upload one of the non-working files and another which dose work ... I'll be happy to take a look at them for you ... upload as zip files where I can access them.

Note:

1: Never use binary cutters ... 99.999% failure

2: When it comes to flash memory type devices ... never write to them until a master backup recovered file is successful ... never rely on a single recovery product to perform this job.

Personally I prefer RAW images of drives ... then you can trash the old drive as much as you like

[Jabus]

Ok, not bad, the script didn't fix it for me, but I'm guessing that was a low chance to start with. The script itself seems pretty readable, while I haven't done python it seems fairly simple to understand. Do you think if I went through the Apple documentation on atoms, etc I'd be able to figure what correct values I should be using and sub them into the python script and hopefully get something that can repair most of the videos? Or should I be able to determine that from the working video regardless? (My apologies for so many questions but I figure it's better to ask)

I've uploaded a working .mov and a non-working .mov (I would have taken a smaller non-working vid but from what I can see the smaller ones don't even have what seems like a correct header [ftyp missing and just junk information at the start, or perhaps raw information]so I figured I'd start with this one as at least the header seems to be intact).

Download: http://rapidshare.com/files/393677297/CorruptVideo.zip.html

If you have the time I'd love for a second opinion to see if something can be attained or if seems feasible that it could be brought back, in the mean time I'm continuing some recovery scanner tools to make sure i've exhausted those options and still getting more familiarized with the hexediting program to see if I can get anything to pop up into virtualdub.

EDIT: I managed to snag a macbook from a friend of mine for a couple days. I downloaded treasured. It seemingly can recover the movies but each of the 12 or so files I have all show similar or same frames in the preview, so I have to imagine if that's accurate then the files are pretty toast. Sadface.

[themaster1]

You should give a try to avidemux (free) if you haven't

[Jabus]

You should give a try to avidemux (free) if you haven't

Appreciate the try, gave it a shot, but unfortunately not. The files either don't load or crash avidemux

One of the files asked if I wanted to re-index it, I said yes, but it couldn't determine the aspect ratio and crashed out. I got my hopes up momentarily.

[themaster1]

Then try avisynth maybe

DirectShowSource("C:\MyVideo.mov",FPS=29.970, ConvertFPS=true)
ConverttoRGB32()

[Jabus]

Another no go, windows media player pops up playing a quick message after some time saying that the .avs is unsupported. Similar response in virtualdub.

[themaster1]

Well i'd say you're officially doomed but "don't give up the fight" like that good ol' Bobby says

I remember back when i was struggling with mov i used to work with a software "mov to avi" or something