Corrupted files from Sony A7S iii

[Doug Jensen]

One time in middle school I won an award for best notes because I was so sickly neurotic about paying attention and writing down everything perfectly, even random lines which I thought had a purpose but were just chalk marks not completely erased from the previous day.

Rainman.

[cyvideo]

Are there any other solutions out there that can "fix" .mp4 files? They all have data (some are 3+GB) but none are playable. The files are on the PC. I don't need to recover deleted clips but rather somehow "fix" these...

I don't know about fix, but just had a similar problem to sort out. A cameraman came to me only yesterday, Monday with an XQD card with a UHD 50p concert shoot he shot on Sunday where things went horribly wrong. He was running a normal 14.8v V-Loc battery using D-Tap step-up DC-DC converter cable to step up to 19.5 volts for his FX6 when everything shut down. The camera wouldn't restart. Changed battery and still no restart. Swapped out the V-Loc for an onboard battery, it then fired up again and all went well. On closer inspection, it turned out the DC-DC converter cable had fried itself internally.

After the event the XQD was loaded back into the camera which prompted to run a "card restore" or whatever it's called. That failed with an "unrecognized media" media message.

This is what I did on a PC. I mounted the XQD in a card adapter and the PC saw the card okay. I found that the old Media Player Home Cinema would actually play the MXF files, but with no progress marker running on the timeline counter. The play indicator wasn't progressing along the play bar, but the file was playing. Every now and again, a bunch of corrupted pixelated frames would flash through as it played. Nothing else would even look at or mount this file. So even if you can't play any of the files, the following might work to help you out.

First step.
The step of last resort. I fired up "Shutter Encoder". In Shutter Encoder, I could drag the file into its window. I tried a "Rewrap" to MOV as this has got me out of problems in the past. This failed. So with nothing to lose, I selected "Create an image sequence from video". I selected JPG as the PNG file exports work out about 5-6MB per frame. The JPGs are around 0.5MB per frame. I then ran this export sequence. A while later, takes quite a while, I had a folder with thousands of JPG files. No audio, of course!

Next step.
As I stated earlier, the file would actually play in Media Player Home Cinema (MPC-HC v1.9.1x64) with sound. I captured the sound using Audacity using its Windows WASPI "record what you hear" option. Saved that out as a 48Hz 24-bit .WAV file.

Last step.
Brought all the still images into Resolve as an Image Sequence. Brought the captured audio WAV file into Resolve. Synced them up on the timeline and exported a new UHD 50p file.

File rescued! Lucky they had a couple of other cameras covering the event as that allowed them to cut around the corrupted frames in the reconstructed video. All those corrupted frames turned up as visually corrupted stills in the sequence.

Chris Young

Every editor should have this tool set!

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/

Shutter 03.jpg

[MrP]

Thanks so much for all of your thoughts and suggestions. For fear that I was getting obsessed I've given up for now... I was shooting with two cameras and the only shots I'll miss are ones that I remember getting but have similar shots on the other camera. So it's not the end of the world. But it's certainly frustrating that I don't know WHY it happened.

I think I've been doing what a lot of you have suggested but there are some better workflow options you suggested. I never thought about using Catalyst Browse to see thumbnails. Some footage is 10bit which Windows sometimes struggles to show thumbnails for- I bet Catalyst would work great for this. I love the idea of Parashoot but I'm on PC. I've always used Handbrake and XMedia Recode but never used Shutter Encoder- I've added that to my arsenal now. Thanks!

I tried the card in the camera (I have the camera custom name the cards so I know which camera the cards come from- CAM A or CAM B) and the camera didn't recognize any footage at all. Not even the good footage. No option to recover or restore. So, I assume the card is damaged (or at least the file structure is as the camera doesn't know there are playable files). Since I don't think there's much else to try with the card I tried recording a sample clip and it does show up in the camera and is playable. Just out of curiosity I played around with some of the XML files on the card (I made copies) to see if I could "add" the files that I know were good back into the camera's folder. But it's some trickery that I don't understand.

I would have more confidence if it was just recovering lost files (I have Easeus and someone else mentioned Disk Drill), but the files aren't lost, they are just corrupt.

In the past I had proxy recording turned on and even thought to check there incase some low-quality files were still accessible, but that was turned off, presumably when I was shooting at a higher quality or dual recording or some other setting that did not allow for proxies.

Chris, thanks so much for your thorough walkthrough! Unfortunately, I can't get the files to be read by any software. I had forgotten about Media Player Home Cinema as I've used VLC lately. I tried it with hope in my eyes but no luck I gave Shutter Encoder a try but it also gave an error once I clicked Encode (or whatever the "go" button is).

I'll let you know if I ever get these files but I have a tendency to get obsessed with something when it presents itself as a challenge... Sometimes that's good and sometimes it kills me. I think I need to give up... unless someone has more ideas!

Thank you again, everyone, I really appreciate your input!

-Stephen

[cyvideo]

I'll let you know if I ever get these files but I have a tendency to get obsessed with something when it presents itself as a challenge... Sometimes that's good and sometimes it kills me. I think I need to give up... unless someone has more ideas!

Last long shot, I guess. Can you upload one of the smaller files and post a link where some of us could download it and have a go at it? Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer etc. If you do that also supply a known good ten-second file from the same camera if possible. Used for file reconstruction by some software. Understand your reluctance at giving up. Over the years I have acquired some weird software and apps, some of which have given surprising results in recovering and fixing things. One is a piece of software from a programmer guy in India. Never been commercially available, but surprisingly good. Always up for a challenge. Hate being beaten by technology!

Chris Young

[MrP]

Last long shot, I guess. Can you upload one of the smaller files and post a link where some of us could download it and have a go at it? Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer etc. If you do that also supply a known good ten-second file from the same camera if possible. Used for file reconstruction by some software. Understand your reluctance at giving up. Over the years I have acquired some weird software and apps, some of which have given surprising results in recovering and fixing things. One is a piece of software from a programmer guy in India. Never been commercially available, but surprisingly good. Always up for a challenge. Hate being beaten by technology!

Chris Young

I'll take you up on that! I'll upload one and then I'll see if I can grab a few different versions of good files since I don't know for certain what framerate they would have been recorded in. On this particular project, we filmed in a few different frame rates (23.976 and 59.94). I think everything from this timeframe was just 8bit rather than 10bit which we used in specific challenging locations for daylight. This project is not a corporate or commercial project so I am happy to share a few clips.

Thank you again, Chris, I appreciate it.

[cyvideo]

I'll take you up on that! I'll upload one

Just message me when you have files up somewhere.

Chris Young

[Zekee]

Hi there,

Long story short, I have a handful of .mp4 files from a Sony A7Siii shoot that are unplayable anywhere. MediaInfo doesn't even show information for them. A few before and after clips work, but the lot of them are all unplayable. I found RepairIt by Wondershare but it has so far been unable to repair any of the files. Are there any other solutions out there that can "fix" .mp4 files? They all have data (some are 3+GB) but none are playable. The files are on the PC. I don't need to recover deleted clips but rather somehow "fix" these...

More information:
I have a card that had over 100 clips shot on it in various formats (10bit, 8bit, 23.976, 60, etc.). I always shoot dual card recordings in case one card fails but in this case I saw no failure, copied the card to the server using TeraCopy (using PC), TeraCopy did the verification (not sure what method is used), no errors. I always save the cards until needed again at which point I format and reuse. Of course this project was on the back burner so I didn't get to it until this weekend. This weekend I loaded the footage into Premiere Pro and found at least 10% of the clips are unrecognizable in any program (Windows Media Player, VLC, Media Encoder, MediaInfo, etc.). They all have varying amounts of data.

I DO have one SD card with the footage on it but I don't know for sure if it is the footage that was copied to the computer or if it was the 2nd card. That doesn't mean anything except that both cards had bad files created by the Sony camera, OR the one GOOD card had the data that I cleared off when this card appeared to copy fine and I can no longer compare files.

Any advice?

It sounds like you are having issues with some of the .mp4 files from your Sony A7Siii shoot becoming corrupted or unplayable. This can be a frustrating problem, especially if you are unable to access important footage from your shoot.

There are a few potential solutions you can try to "fix" the corrupted .mp4 files. One option is to use a file repair tool like RepairIt by Wondershare, which is specifically designed to repair damaged or corrupted video files. While this tool has not been able to repair your files so far, it is possible that it may be able to fix the problem with a different repair method or by using a different repair tool.

Another option you can try is to use a video recovery software program to try to recover the damaged .mp4 files. These types of programs can scan your hard drive or storage media for deleted or damaged files and attempt to recover the data. Some popular video recovery software options include Stellar Phoenix Video Repair, Video Repair Tool by Grau GmbH, and Digital Video Repair.

It is also worth noting that some video editing software programs, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, have built-in tools for repairing damaged video files. These tools can sometimes fix problems with corrupted files by re-encoding or rebuilding the file to make it playable. You may want to try using the repair tools in your video editing software to see if they are able to fix the problem with your .mp4 files.

Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that any of these solutions will work, and it is possible that the damaged files may be irreparable if the data has been lost or overwritten. However, it is worth trying these methods to see if they are able to fix the problem and recover your footage.

In the meantime, you may want to consider using a screen recorder to capture the video output of your computer as you play the corrupted .mp4 files. Screen recorders allow you to record the video and audio output of your computer as you play the files, and they can be used to create a digital copy of the content that can be edited and processed in a video editing software.

There are a number of screen recording software programs available, both free and paid, and many of them are specifically designed to capture high quality video. Some popular screen recording software options include Movavi Screen Recorder, OBS Studio, and Camtasia.

You can find more information about the best free screen recorders in this article: https://www.movavi.com/learning-port...recorders.html. This article provides a list of several screen recording software options that you can try, along with a brief overview of their features and capabilities.

[LennyLevy]

I didn't read through this thread but if you still need help try Aero Quartet in Spain - They fixed my corrupted A7siii file that said RSG instead of mp4. https://aeroquartet.com/treasured/index.en.html

[cyvideo]

I didn't read through this thread but if you still need help try [B]Aero Quartet in Spain -

Using a similar process to Aero Quartet but as downloadable software is Stellar Repair for Video. Similarly, in as much, if you have the camera that recorded the files you have a problem with, or good files from that camera, a reconstruction of the headers and footers of the corrupted files can be rebuilt using the video, audio and time code layout and format from the good sample files. Unlike Aero Quartet who can handle MXF files, Stellar can't at this point handle them.

Chris Young

https://www.stellarinfo.com/disk-rec...deo-repair.php