Apologies in advance if this is the wrong forum -- I'm not sure where to place it. I have a 1GB SD card which was accidentally erased in-camera. I've recovered the files from the card using an excellent program called PhotoRec. When reviewing the recovered files, I had several hundred jpgs and 22 avi files. The avi files range from 370kb to 84 mb, as shown below. These small videos typically run about 1 megabyte for 4 seconds of video, so these should correspond to videos from a couple of seconds to 6 minutes. But when I play them, the small ones are the length you'd expect, but the larger ones all play as 19 seconds long. Somehow the files are the right size, but the content is truncated at 19 seconds in every case. Any idea how this might have happened, and if there's any way to verify whether the missing video content is still in the avi container, and to recover it? Some of the missing videos are from a friend's wedding, and it would be very nice to have the missing parts back. I'm grateful for any suggestions or assistance. Thank you. --Jason
Try opening the file in VirtualDub. Click 'File > Open Video File. Check the box for extended options then the re-derive key frames box. If the file opens and plays ok, Click Video > Direct Stream Copy and save it.
WOW!! Thank you so very much, that totally did it! I've been hanging onto this card for a looooong time hoping to recover what's on it, and your technique worked flawlessly. I hit one hiccup because the format of the videos is apparently M4S2, but I found a solution here: http://www.moviecodec.com/solutions/mp4s-m4s2-microsoft-iso-mpeg-4-versions-1-and-11-8235/ using "ffdshow tryout" and once I set that up, your advice worked perfectly. 21 of the 22 opened and saved without issue, one of them kept crashing at a particular frame, so I opened it normally (without extended options) then set the video range to start a few frames after that, and was then able to copy the whole stream. Thanks very much for the excellent advice, these videos will make several people very happy! --Jason
