Hard drive failed, .mts recovered but some won't play. Help Please?

[jamiehutber]

Well Its been 2 years since the drive failed and I've kept the files in the vain hope that one day I may be able to recover them. I'd love to recovery these files so badly. Its around 1TB of data from my football season.

After searching for these years, I saw this thread: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/341576-Corrupted-MTS-FILE-problem and it blew my mind how helpful you guys are, so I thought I'd ask.

Here is info from Mediainfo:

A correctly working file from the same device

General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : M:\Mayfield\Videos\Captured_Video\1011\Week 17\00000.MTS
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 2.83 GiB
Duration : 47mn 1s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 8 618 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 18.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 47mn 1s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 8 010 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 16.8 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.129
Stream size : 2.63 GiB (93%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 47mn 1s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -67ms
Stream size : 86.1 MiB (3%)

Text
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 47mn 1s
Delay relative to video : -67ms

And the same from a broken file:

General
Complete name : M:\Mayfield\Videos\Captured_Video\1011\Week 25\00000.MTS
File size : 8.12 MiB

Also, opened in the hex editor there is a lot of data in there, very similar to the working file.

I also tried AVIRepair and this didn't get the file playing but it did something:

General
Complete name : M:\Mayfield\Videos\Captured_Video\1011\Week 17\00001.MTS
Format : DV
Commercial name : DVCPRO
File size : 2.09 MiB
Duration : 609ms
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 28.8 Mbps

Video
Format : DV
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Duration : 600ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Stream size : 1.75 MiB (84%)

Audio
ID : 0
Format : PCM
Duration : 609ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Encoded bit rate : 0 bps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 114 KiB (5%)

Any suggestions or the likes?

Cheers

[jamiehutber]

No ideas anybody ?

[Nelson37]

Look at the file size. There is no video to repair, you are using the wrong tool.

Do you still have the original drive, was it an external USB drive? What you need is data recovery software and the original drive. The data may very well be gone forever.

BEFORE YOU USE ANY RECOVERY TOOL, check back here. If you already have, describe in detail.

The best I have used is GetDataBack.

[jamiehutber]

sadly I no longer have the hard drives in question. This happened a little over a year ago.

I still have the files, as mentioned. They are between 2mb - 4gb's each. So they are defiantly not empty.

To recover the files I used "testdisk-6.14-WIP" this was the only program that could detect my lost partition headers. Some of the files recovered correctly, others will not play.

Some will not import into adobe premier, but will play in my VLC

[Nelson37]

Oh, so there are some files that are longer than 6-tenths of a second? Imagine that. Would have been useful to know.

Usually, if you can play it, you can save it. First step would be to try to import it into something just a bit less picky than Premiere, that also has an export function.

Which one will work with the files you have is a total crapshoot. Ulead products often opened files that would not open with other progs, for me.

[jamiehutber]

Great thinking, although I thought saying there is overall 1tb of data would imply that there is more than 6-thenths of a second lol

I'll give this a whirl for sure