Question / Help How do I recover an incomplete mp4 recording?

[ego plant]

My power went out as I was recording an mp4 with obs, the video data is all saved up until that point, but since the power went out there was not an official stopping of it.

The file I'm left with, 2gb in size so obviously lots of video data, will not open with mpv, vlc, handbrake, etc.

Anyone know how to recover this video data?

 

[Fenrir]

You don't. This is why you don't record directly to MP4, you should record to FLV or MKV and remux after.

 

[ego plant]

So it is impossible? I cannot "complete" (add header or something) to the data to get it to work with some other program or something?

 

[Fenrir]

So it is impossible? I cannot "complete" (add header or something) to the data to get it to work with some other program or something?

Nope, pretty much impossible. It's not technically impossible, there are some extremely difficult forensic methods that can have a tiny chance of recovering a file, but those are generally performed with specialized equipment by industry experts (read: not for someone's local recording.).

But for all that it matters in your case, it's impossible. Google search "recover mp4 missing moov atom" if you want more detailed information on why you should really never record direct to mp4.

 

[ego plant]

Yeah I guess the idea is mp4 is just data in random (not literally) order that needs an index to make sense of which is written afterwards, and flv, etc. is just a stream of data in order.