Accidently shutdown computer during VirtualDub capture. Can i recover file?

[Master Tape]

I captured a home video, and after i was done capturing, i went to stop the capture but accidently bumped the power button on my computer as i was doing so, and it shut down the computer whilst capturing still. Now while the file exists and Media Info reports the stats, i just can't get the file to play. I tried to recapture, but my JVC 9600 started making strange noises and has damaged a portion of the tape now (where a line is on the edge of the tape, and the picture is garbled on playback. So the only known clean copy i've got now is this file. The footage is irreplaceable so i hope someone can help.

[Skiller]

If you captured in an AVI container, try opening the file in VirtualDub and see what it says.

[Master Tape]

I did, but getting nothing, just a blank grey screen. The AVI file is 11.4GB so there must be something there, but the timecode says 00:00:00 presumably because it hasn't finalised.

[zing269]

It probably has a corrupt or missing index. VLC can repair a bad index and you could try remuxing it with ffmpeg. Of course, try this on a copy of the file.

[jagabo]

The AVI file is 11.4GB so there must be something there

Make sure you don't write anything to the drive until you have recovered the file. If this is your boot drive the best practice is not to boot the drive. Remove it from the computer and put it in another Windows computer as a secondary drive. Windows is writing log files and other stuff to the boot drive all the time. Some of those may overwrite parts of the file you are trying to recover.

The keyframe index is one of the last things written when an AVI is closed. If the computer crashed that index is missing. VLC can play AVI files with a missing keyframe index (you won't be able to seek). So if VLC can play your video it's a good sign that you may be able to recover much of it. But if you're working on your boot drive don't install the program -- doing so may further damage the file. You can download the portable version, put it on a thumb drive, and run it from there.

VirtualDub2 is also able to rebuild the keyframe index but it sounds like it's not opening your file. Try Video -> Scan Video Stream for Errors if you can.

There's an old program called DivFix that can rebuild the index for xvid and divx AVI files.

Then you get into manually replacing the AVI Header of the file (the first few thousand bytes, use a copy of the file, not the original) with the header from a similar file (same codec, same dimensions, etc). Follow that with rebuilding the keyframe index).

[Master Tape]

Ah.. i captured something else afterwards. But it wasn't captured on my boot drive thankfully, but a secondary drive especially for the captured files.

I then transferred all the files to another computer from my external hard drive dock.

But the file does play in VLC after a bit, but not before an annoying clicking sound starts 10 seconds in. I tried fixing it but it only fixes 17% of the AVI index and it only plays for 4 minutes and 30 seconds before the clicking noise starts again and can't seek again from that point on.

After trying Scan Video Stream for Errors, still no change and reports at the bottom "0 frames masked (0 frames bad, 0 frames good but undecodable)"

Tried DivFix, but got I/O error 131.