Is this video from my phone history?

[TB Player]

I have a 3.8 GB video taken with my Android phone. It was one of several videos that I transferred to my computer - the other videos were of smaller sizes and transferred properly, but with this large video the transfer stalled and wouldn't transfer properly, so I stopped the transfer. After I stopped it, I couldn't find the video on either the phone or the computer.

Using a file recovery program, I found the deleted video on my SD card and restored it to my computer. But I discovered that the video wouldn't play, even though I had played the video several times on my phone. I tried opening the video in VLC, WMP, AviDemux, MP4BoxGui, ffmpeg, and a couple of others but it would not open in any of them. I tried Video Repair Software and it was only able to recover about 20 seconds of the beginning.

Finally, I opened the video in a hex editor. After the first two strings there are strings of zeros until 0x000c5c2f - from there until 0x000c6930 all of the strings are either completely b4 or 5a, alternating in groups. Then at 0x000c6940 there appears to be data until 0x02ec0410. After that, all of the strings are all zeros until the eof (0xf340d260).

Looking at the video in the hex editor and seeing that most of the file is zeros, I'm assuming that my video is gone.... correct?

What is curious to me is that, even though the file is mainly zeros, the size is 3.8 GB... the original size of the file. So I'm wondering - if the file still contains 3.8 GB of data, is there any way to recover it? Or is the file simply *reporting* the original file size and is much smaller on disk?

[mazinz]

It is possible that some of the data was corrupted but not the entire video file. So lets say the beginning is screwed but the sections after that would work fine, then again it could be just corrupt headers. Did you try opening the video in virtualdub? Sometimes that program allowed me to open otherwise partially corrupted files in the past

[TB Player]

Yes, I did try VDub - no luck, it wouldn't even open.

[Baldrick]

Try video repair tool trial version. Choose a working file and then the broken file and see if it can find any video at all.

[mazinz]

hmm you know what might work for this sort of thing would be smart projects isobuster. That has the ability to write proper dummy sectors over corrupted sections while copying the good parts so in the end you would have a playable file. I have had to use that few times with some homemade dvds (not mine) that my friend had trouble trying to copy back to the pc (since he used crap media). It also worked when actual data I had was once corrupted from a bad burn (but the disc itself was readable)

However the catch with isobuster is that it needs to be from a disc or as an image file. I would burn the file (as it is) as a dvd data disc. Then have isobuster try to copy the file from the disc and back to your pc. It then may see the corrupted sectors and ask if you want to replace those sections and in which case you would

Again only a theory that something like this would work and isobuster is not freeware, just another option to try (you can use it in trial mode and see)

[Keyser]

File recovering utilities work well when the deleted files are in a continuous chain, i.e. not fragmented. When files are fragmented, utilities try to recover data from lost or free clusters, wich may contain anything. That's the reason why you have a file with the original size.

Since most of the file contains zeros, you can forget about using that file. If you didn't make any changes to your SD, there's a chance you can get better results if you try other file recovering tools besides the one you already used. But, if I were you, I wouldn't be very optimistic.

[TB Player]

Try video repair tool trial version. Choose a working file and then the broken file and see if it can find any video at all.

Thanks. But when I mentioned the "Video Repair Software" I was referring to Video Repair Tool, which only recovered about 20 seconds of the beginning of the video.

[Baldrick]

I would try another recovering software like Keyser mentions. Maybe CD Roller.

[JVRaines]

Looking at the video in the hex editor and seeing that most of the file is zeros, I'm assuming that my video is gone.... correct?

What is curious to me is that, even though the file is mainly zeros, the size is 3.8 GB... the original size of the file. So I'm wondering - if the file still contains 3.8 GB of data, is there any way to recover it? Or is the file simply *reporting* the original file size and is much smaller on disk?

Sorry this happened to you! You're right — you can't make something from nothing. With mostly zeroes, little or no video can be recovered. Your only hope is that the data is still on your card and the recovery tool wasn't smart enough to find it; maybe another program will. But I would not be optimistic.

[TB Player]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. When I get the chance I will try a different file recovery tool.

At least I've learned to remove the SD card and use a card reader rather than to try and transfer directly from the phone.