Question / Help Can't open recording after sudden pc shutdown

[AlphaAntidote]

Basically, I was streaming and enabled recording. My power got cut and my pc shut down. After trying to open the video that was recorded prior to the shutdown the video player I was trying to use couldn't open the file. I'm guessing the file might be corrupt. Is there any way to make it playable again?

 

[dping]

Basically, I was streaming and enabled recording. My power got cut and my pc shut down. After trying to open the video that was recorded prior to the shutdown the video player I was trying to use couldn't open the file. I'm guessing the file might be corrupt. Is there any way to make it playable again?

No not fully. use FLV format instead of MP4. FLV can keep video even when crashes.


After your video is done you can then convert it quickly like this:
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-convert-flvs-to-mp4-fast-without-re-encoding.78/

MP4 keeps recording data at the end of files, FLV saves it at the start.

 

[FerretBomb]

Yep, if you were saving to MP4, it's a pile of digital garbage now, sadly. Best to just delete it, and record to FLV in the future, as it tolerates crashes/truncations while only losing the last few seconds of video, rather than the whole thing.

There are tools to 'recover' MP4s, but they rely on a standardized encoding method to salvage a template 'atom' from the end of a complete MP4 and insert it into the damaged/truncated MP4. As OBS encodes differently each time, these tools do not work; about all that you'll get is intermittent clips of wrong-speed video and badly warped audio. Most of them are also for-pay only, quite expensive, and do not guarantee results (which you will not get with an OBS video, full-stop).

Better idea, if your Archive Broadcasts is set on Twitch, you can log into NightDev's TwitchDown site and auth with Twitch to grab a lost video still in the storage grace period from your own past broadcasts. I've had mixed results (a longer cast grabbing a corrupt chunk and failing the download, then having to wait 24 hours for the remote cache to self-clear) but it DOES work without exporting to YouTube.
https://www.nightdev.com/twitchdown/