Video recovery or video repair?
Januar 23, 2023
“Do I need to recover or to repair my video?” is a very frequent customer question. From a distance, we cannot offer an all-over diagnosis. But we can inform you about some basic features of video repair and video recovery.
File damage vs. data loss
Files and especially video files are a complex issue. They are a full texture of streams and signals. Thus, they consist of millions of small data units adding up to the consistent images which we see on screen. Video files are generally defined by the following technical parameters:
- frame rate
- aspect ratio
- bitrate
- resolution
- video and audio signals
- containers (also: formats)
- codecs
Coming back to all aspects of this terminology would lead us too far away from the starting point how to distinguish fie damage from data loss. But first of all, both “accidents” have one thing in common – they create chaos within the file structure or even destroy all structures. Generally, one defines a deleted or lost file as a file which does not appear or exist on a storage medium anymore. In contrary, a damaged or corrupted video file evidently exists on the medium, but does not play or run adequately. In order to differentiate between these cases, checking and comparing the file size “before and after storage accident” is a helpful first step.
“Behind the scenes” of video recovery
First of all: You should go for video recovery when you suppose that you lost your files fully or partly. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that your saved video does not need an additional repair because all hardware incidents might have damaged its inner structure, too. So what happens when you “save” video files with some recovery software like MaxDataGenius? In order to find and save your video files (and others), you’ve got several options.
Browse your medium!
Browsing the storage medium in question is always the first step to take. If you are lucky, your file has just “hidden” in another registry and is easy to find. Sometimes this happens when you unintendedly deleted a file which is still existent somewhere else on your medium. In some “light recovery cases”, the inner storage structure just took some shifts so your files are not completely lost.
Video recovery in action: Save your files!
If you are not lucky enough to find lost or deleted files via browsing, it’s time to save them. You can imagine your disk or flash media like a big archive full of files which you stored, deleted and restructured over months and years. If the “cupboards and boxes” (let’s call it registries, then) break down by accident or through wear-and-tear effects, this crash leaves behind a huge data chaos with damaged documents. File recovery software then searches the files (in your case: videos) in question, puts data traces back together as exactly as possible and restores them in a “safe space” (which is usually a different disk).
Important: NEVER save your recovery results on the medium you’re restoring with MaxDataGenius!
Recover files on a formatted disk!
Let’s get to one of the trickiest issues in data recovery then, which is video recovery on an incorrectly formatted storage medium. Unintended formatting is a dangerous serial killer for your disk contents. Generally, this process completely resets the entire content and data structure of your medium and literally leaves behind “Ground Zero” for a complete restart. Practically, formatting is the bulldozer amongst all data operations. However, even formatting leaves data traces on your storage medium. So there is a chance that you get back RAW files at least which you can convert to other formats. If you are really lucky, video recovery software can also save a file in its original format which needs additional repair.
What happens during video repair?
Recovered or not – some videos just do not play adequately. Considering all the video parameters listed in the beginning, it is clear to see that videos are probably the most complex files to repair. So how does Video Repair Tool manage this difficult job? As every camera type has a slightly different storage process and structure, our video repair software directly works along the “status quo” of your camera. All you need is an intact video from the same camera, your camera or the SD card inside and your software.
Video repair software then reads out the parameters, formats and file structures of the damaged video file and automatically compares them to the same aspects in the intact file. Then, VRT re-assembles the “digital components” of the file texture as exactly as possible. Thus, video repair can save you a lot of time and effort compared to recreating a completely new video. This also counts if you do not get a 100 percent result, which does happen in some special cases.
Important: Sometimes it’s helpful to consider an additional video recovery when the repair process does not work completely. Remember that parts of the files in questions can still be “hidden” or lost in the “data jungle” of your storage medium after an incident or accident. So, there are three optional answers to the question if your files need to be saved or repaired. Either, or … or even both – at least, this combination is worth a try.
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