It can be every videomaker’s nightmare. You click play on your masterpiece– you know, the one that took months and tons of sweat to finish, but instead of displaying your filmmaking genius, the video file sputters and dies.
OMG, it won’t even play!
Yes, digital video files can “break.” They can become corrupted in a variety of ways with a variety of resulting problems on playback. One of the most common causes is an interruption, like an electrical outage, during transfer. At worst, the video won’t play at all, or even be recognized as existing. With less serious issues you might see image sputtering, audio/video synch issues and that sort of thing.
So what do you do? Re-shoot? Re-edit? Give up filmmaking entirely and go bash your head into the wall?
No need for extremes! Certainly no need to reshoot or re edit and you never want to give up filmmaking. 🙂
Fortunately you can solve the problem by finding some software that will more than likely fix it. There are lots of choices, some better than others of course. But be warned because some “solutions” can actually make the problem worse. It is best to stick with tried and true methods and quality solutions.
Remo software company is well known for creating quality repair software. They have an app for just about any file type and situation, not just video.
For video, Remo Repair MOV is the tool you would need. You can download for free. It works on MOV as well as MP4 video files taken from most every camera, camcorder or smartphone you might be using.
They have versions for computers running on Windows and Mac.
Here is a quick step-by-step tutorial produced by the manufacturer to demonstrate how repair is done.
In order to fix the problem, the software first analyses the video to see what is actually wrong. This includes separating the audio and video streams, fixing them and then putting them back together to create a new, healthy, playable MOV or MP4 file.
Here is a list of common problems:
- MOV file header corruption
- Corrupt video due to interruption while transferring
- QuickTime Player errors, error 2048 is common
- Audio video synchronization issues
- Codec issues
- Interruptions while transferring video files from one system to any device or vice versa
- Using unreliable software for recovering the lost or deleted videos
- MOV file header corruption
- Frequently converting your video file format
- Trying to play MOV file on an unsupported media player
Good luck fixing your files and as always, keep making video!