Recovered video files will not play

Recuva
1

I used Recuva to recover some mistakenly deleted videos from my PC. I chose to save the recovered files to a USB stick rather than the hard drive they were deleted from as recommended during the process.

The files show in the USB drive with the correct file size but do not play in any media player. I've even copied them from the USB to the PC hard drive and they still do not play. I also noticed that in the file properties they do not show anything for video length, only file size.

Most of the video were originally shot on Samsung Galaxy S4 mobile phone or Canon Vixia HG20 video camera

Any recommendations on how to resolve this? Thanks in advance

2

Since they're the correct size they may need to be muxed/re-muxed and then re-saved without re-encoding being necessary which would give them the necessary header information so that video players can play the files, know the length and properties, etc.

There's various free muxing/remuxing software available such as Avidemux (no longer works on WinXP) which is where I'd start, and if it doesn't work look for something on VideoHelp.

3

Since they're the correct size they may need to be muxed/re-muxed and then re-saved without re-encoding being necessary which would give them the necessary header information so that video players can play the files, know the length and properties, etc.

There's various free muxing/remuxing software available such as Avidemux (no longer works on WinXP) which is where I'd start, and if it doesn't work look for something on VideoHelp.

Hi Andavari, thanks for the tip. Unfortunately Avidemux wont even open the file. I don't even get an error, it just simply does nothing as if I didn't even choose a file

4

Not sure if this helps but I also tried with PotPlayer media player and when I load the video it gives me this error below. Maybe someone can get some info out of it to point me in the right direction...

File Source (Async.)::Output

==========================

Unable to get video/audio data.

==========================

Media Type 0:

Unknown

[ AM_MEDIA_TYPE ]

  • majortype: MEDIATYPE_Stream {E436EB83-524F-11CE-9F53-0020AF0BA770}

  • subtype: Unknown GUID Name {08E22ADA-B715-45ED-9D20-7B87750301D4}

  • formattype: TIME_FORMAT_NONE {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

  • bFixedSizeSamples: 1

  • bTemporalCompression: 0

  • lSampleSize: 1

  • cbFormat: 0

==========================

Unable to get video/audio data.

==========================

Media Type 1:

Unknown

[ AM_MEDIA_TYPE ]

  • majortype: MEDIATYPE_Stream {E436EB83-524F-11CE-9F53-0020AF0BA770}

  • subtype: TIME_FORMAT_NONE {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

  • formattype: TIME_FORMAT_NONE {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

  • bFixedSizeSamples: 1

  • bTemporalCompression: 0

  • lSampleSize: 1

  • cbFormat: 0

5

Scan the usb drive or your hard drive using Reuva with Scan for Non-Deleted Files checked. In Advanced Mode select the recovered file and look at the first 100 bytes of the file in the Info panel. If it looks like random stuff then you're not going to get very far with it. Post a screenshot of the info panel.