I have a corrupted video file, dont know original format

[Brokenrecord]

Hi,

I have a video file I would like to repair, I recovered it off a broken harddrive with Recuva. It only plays for 4 minutes then the frame freezes, the original video was 2 hours.
I tried various repair tools but they cut the video off at that frame instead of repairing what's past it. When opening it does recognize the video is supposed to be 1:59h long and the filesize shows this too. The data is there I think, VLC just won't reach it.

VLC on debug gives me the following message after said frame:

avcodec warning: cannot decode one frame

I tried to recover this video for some time now i don't remember which was the original file, I have a folder with different versions of it (.avi .mkv .mp4) because of recovery attempts.

Can someone guide me from this point into trying to fix this file?

[redwudz]

You could try to open it with a hex editor, such as the one in Virtual Dub FilterMod, under 'Tools'.
If it shows all zeros after the four minute mark, probably nothing to recover.

MediaInfo may also tell you something about the original file.

And welcome to our forums.

[sneaker]

If it shows all zeros after the four minute mark, probably nothing to recover.

And even if there are no zeros the file is probably still broken. Probably the file was once moved or deleted and some sectors got overwritten by other files. That's why if you accidentally delete a file you must not write anything at all to the affected drive to increase chances of successful recovery.

[Brokenrecord]

Thanks for the tips!, it is indeed all 0's in the hex editor. I guess I have to accept the loss and carry on. Also thanks for the tip on not doing anything with the drive.