Is there any way to recover damaged .mov files???

nerudaneruda
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited October 2014
We were recording an event with our studio cameras by capturing live into final cut pro. Unfortunately, about three hours into the event the power in the building went out due to bad weather in the area. There is a file in the capture scratch folder for the event (23gigs), but the file does not open. We've tried converting it with Compressor, iSquint, ProCoder, FileJuicer...but no program recognizes the file.



Any suggestions?



Similar situations:

http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...upted-mov.html

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/903771

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    Media files typically have a header at the beginning of the file and sometimes a footer at the end. The data goes in between. Sometimes if either the header or footer are missing, they can be reconstructed by creating a working file of the same type and copying the hex codes over.



    You usually have to be pretty accurate or you can get corrupt parts of the video as it decodes the data from the wrong start point.



    All this is done using a Hex editor.



    http://ridiculousfish.com/hexfiend/

    http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10658



    You'll be lucky if the file actually has any data in it though. It may be filled with zeroes when you open it in one of those programs - if so, it's not recoverable as you don't have any data. When a file is being written, it opens up a file reference. If it doesn't close it properly, it can flush the entire file. This is just the way that computers work. Even with resumable downloads like torrents, if the computer crashes during a 2GB download, it can easily reset back to zero instantly - the file size stays the same, the data is just zeroed out. Because it's not allocating new space, it can do this very quickly.



    This is one advantage that tape recording still has over digital recording. It simply can't destroy any of the information that's already been stored. If you'd split the digital recording into a new file after every couple of minutes, you would only have lost at most 2 minutes of footage. It does become a bit of nuisance to join them up again though and you can get dodgy frames in something like HDV as it's not an i-frame compression like DV, DVC Pro or AIC.



    Instead of doing it live using a computer where anything from a crash to a power outage can affect the capture, maybe use one of these:



    http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/R...ArticleID=8681



    You then record to both hard drive and tape plus due to the filesystem limitations, it has to split the files into 2GB segments. They say it's inconvenient but 15 files isn't that bad if it saves your ass. Plus you can recover any of the broken files from the tape as a last resort.



    You get standalone models that connect to any camera like the Quickstream and Firestore drives. Quickstream have a solid state model too that does HDV.



    Either that or capture live to a laptop with a battery backup. The portable recorders take power from the camera battery.
  • Reply 2 of 12
    nerudaneruda Posts: 439member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    This is one advantage that tape recording still has over digital recording. It simply can't destroy any of the information that's already been stored. If you'd split the digital recording into a new file after every couple of minutes, you would only have lost at most 2 minutes of footage.



    We usually record to tape on one of our VTRs in the studio and everything is usually connected to an APC power back up, except that we are performing maintenance (rewiring everything) and both were not available that day.



    The file is 23gigs, so hopefully I'll be able to salvage some of the footage from it.



    Thanks for your help Marvin.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    sandramcsandramc Posts: 1member
    I recorded a video using my Canon IXUS and it was even playing on the camera but on transfering it isnt playing on the computer or on my camera anymore, wat do i do???? I believe it is corrupted, but i hav no idea as to wat happened
  • Reply 4 of 12
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SandraMc View Post


    I recorded a video using my Canon IXUS and it was even playing on the camera but on transfering it isnt playing on the computer or on my camera anymore, wat do i do???? I believe it is corrupted, but i hav no idea as to wat happened



    What model of Canon IXUS are you using? If it records MVI movies, you won't be able to play those back on the Mac as it's a proprietary format.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    tayataya Posts: 2member
    thank
  • Reply 6 of 12
    xcfrrdvdxcfrrdvd Posts: 1member
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  • Reply 7 of 12
    sangdawsangdaw Posts: 3member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Neruda View Post


    We were recording an event with our studio cameras by capturing live into final cut pro. Unfortunately, about three hours into the event the power in the building went out due to bad weather in the area. There is a file in the capture scratch folder for the event (23gigs), but the file does not open. We've tried converting it with Compressor, iSquint, ProCoder, FileJuicer...but no program recognizes the file.



    Any suggestions?



    Similar situations:

    http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...upted-mov.html

    http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/903771



    Thanks
  • Reply 8 of 12
    sonusonu Posts: 1member
    Hi...

    There is nothing to worry about your corrupted or damaged .mov files. You can easily repair them and get back them by using a reliable software. It is nothing but Repair MOV Software. By using this software you can repair corrupt mov files easily.This software also supports large sized corrupted and damaged MOV, MP4 files.

    Also you can download the software.....

    To know more about this software use this link.

    http://www.movrepair.net/corrupt.html

    To download the software use this one.

    http://remo.fileburst.com/rn/remo-repair-mov.zip
  • Reply 9 of 12
    dickadamdickadam Posts: 1member


    If you have deleted MOV files by mistake and faing data loss situation then in such a condition you can use MOV Recovery Software which is able to recover the deleted or severely damaged MOV files easily. It will guide you by giving step-by-step guidance during the scanning process to make it more simple. It will also help you to recover all the different videos format like MP4, WMV, 3GP, MPEG etc. So download the software as soon as possible to restore all the data. Read More Information:- http://www.mov-recovery.com/instant-recovery-of-mov-data-file-restore-deleted-videos-back

  • Reply 10 of 12
    admarteenadmarteen Posts: 1member

    Ya, surely! Here available a reliable and sophisticated MOV video recovery software which will effectively rescue all video files irrespective of the reasons behind its corruption. I too had tried it and recommending for you. For detailed information regarding its working and reliability, please visit:

    http://recover.mov-recovery.com

  • Reply 11 of 12
    john taylorjohn taylor Posts: 1member

    You can certainly recover damaged MOV files by making use of Remo Recover. I used this application a few weeks back and it worked fine and helped me recover all my MOV files.

  • Reply 12 of 12
    alen sungalen sung Posts: 1member

    Hey, Buddy. It is obvious that your video file is corrupted or damaged by the way. I think you might find out some solutions from an article named Top MOV Repair Software List. It is an introduction of several relatively popular and reliable tools available for repairing corrupted/damaged MOV files. Why not go and read it to see if the software recommended suits your need? Good Luck!

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