Stuff happens...
Often something goes wrong with a video capture or a hard disk or a memory card, and you loose precious data. For a fixed fee, we will repair the data and retrieve as much footage as possible.
We don't do data recovery and assume that, if required, you have used a data recovery utility and retrieved the files first. If the recovered files presumably contain video, but you cannot open them with your video editing and playback software, then it's a task for us.
How we repair your movies
We don't do miracles. If the file only contains garbage, we cannot do anything. Most of the time, the video and audio are almost intact and we can recover 99% of your footage. Quality of recovered video and audio is usually the same as recorded.
Movie repair is a difficult process that requires special tools and an experienced Video Hacker. Main steps involved are:
- Understand how good data can be found and extracted from the file
- Develop video and audio scraping algorithm, or customize existing tools
- Extract video and audio (This is the only step that is automated)
- Check quality of video and audio. Resynchronize Audio if necessary
- Generate the repaired files and submit them to customer for review
This is a labour-intensive work, and Video Hackers are not cheap... that's why we charge between $89 and $149 for each repair.
Do basic checks first
- If the file did work in the past, but no longer works, the problem may just be a settings issue. In particular if you have reinstalled system software, upgraded video software, or made changes recently, you should check your settings. For example, recent QuickTime updates de-activate Flash playback by default. If other files also fail to work now, it's probably a settings issue affecting a category of files, or specific container formats or codecs.
- Try to make a copy of the file in your hard disk. If the operating system cannot read the file to copy it, the problem is a storage problem. Use a file system or data recovery utility to make the file readable first. Then, if the file still doesn't open in your favorite video software, then you should submit it to us for a free diagnostic.
- The file size is also a good diagnostic tool. Files of zero or a few kilobytes are too small to contain anything repairable. If you know the duration of the damaged movie and the video settings, in particular bit rate, you can calculate what the file size should be. If you are off by an order of magnitude, repair is probably impossible. You can also compare size/duration ratio with other movies with same or similar formats and compression settings. If you get very different numbers, the movie is probably not repairable or with big chunks missing.
- If the movie can be reproduced but audio or video has some glitches, then it can be edited. Editing is much cheaper than repair, and you can do it with software like SimpleMovieX or QuickTime Pro.