Recording Not Saved

[EnergyCitizen]

Hello, I recorded a live stream seminar that was a little over 3 hours. When I clicked Stop Recording, the label on the button turned to Stopping Recording. I then pressed Pause and the button still said Stopping Recording. Then I rebooted and the recording was gone. Is there a way to get the recording back? Also, I posted this same question on the Discord area. I was not sure which area was the appropriate place to post this.

 

[AaronD]

Did you record directly to MP4? If so, then you've got some data-recovery to do. Try to avoid using that drive until you've done that, as the aborted recording might be marked as free space and thus available to overwrite at any time. If you recorded to MKV, then you should be okay.

MP4 has some headers to say where the data is, that need to be updated for the finished file. If you were recording directly in that format, that's probably what the "Stopping Recording" was for. If you interrupted that, then you've lost the header, so the file is now corrupt.

MKV does things differently, so it doesn't need the header to be fixed-up later. If that gets interrupted, everything's still good.

YouTube and a lot of editors take MKV also, so no need to convert, but OBS can convert ("remux") from MKV to MP4 if you really *need* it. There's even an option to do that automatically...and a warning in OBS to do it that way instead of recording directly to MP4, with this stated reason.

If you really *need* MP4, then there's no loss of quality to convert: it's the exact same data in a different container, so the "conversion" just copies it over, bit-for-bit exactly.

 

[EnergyCitizen]

Did you record directly to MP4? If so, then you've got some data-recovery to do. Try to avoid using that drive until you've done that, as the aborted recording might be marked as free space and thus available to overwrite at any time. If you recorded to MKV, then you should be okay.

MP4 has some headers to say where the data is, that need to be updated for the finished file. If you were recording directly in that format, that's probably what the "Stopping Recording" was for. If you interrupted that, then you've lost the header, so the file is now corrupt.

MKV does things differently, so it doesn't need the header to be fixed-up later. If that gets interrupted, everything's still good.

YouTube and a lot of editors take MKV also, so no need to convert, but OBS can convert ("remux") from MKV to MP4 if you really *need* it. There's even an option to do that automatically...and a warning in OBS to do it that way instead of recording directly to MP4, with this stated reason.

If you really *need* MP4, then there's no loss of quality to convert: it's the exact same data in a different container, so the "conversion" just copies it over, bit-for-bit exactly.

AaronD, thank you for replying. I do not know much about video files. Do you offer a service to help me recover it?

 

[EnergyCitizen]

AaronD, thank you for replying. I do not know much about video files. Do you offer a service to help me recover it?

Aarond, I looked at the other files that are saved and they are all MKV, so it is logical that the unsaved file is also MKV. If that is the case, how can I get the file to show in MS Explore file manager. Thank for answering these questions.

 

[AaronD]

AaronD, thank you for replying. I do not know much about video files. Do you offer a service to help me recover it?

No, I don't. There are both free and paid apps that try to do that - nothing is guaranteed either way - and there are professional services. Again, nothing is guaranteed. Regardless, any use of that drive at all could risk losing more, including to install an app now to try and recover it.

Best, I think, is to install a (good!) free recovery app on a different computer, pull the drive from this one, and let the other computer try to recover what it can.

 

[AaronD]

Aarond, I looked at the other files that are saved and they are all MKV, so it is logical that the unsaved file is also MKV. If that is the case, how can I get the file to show in MS Explore file manager. Thank for answering these questions.

Are you sure you saved it to the same place? Probably yes, but just to make sure that that's not all it is.

It's also possible that something went weird with Windows handling the file, not OBS, in which case we're back to data recovery again.

 

[Xsoulsin]

I would advise to check the recording path. Far as I know doing MKV and I think FLV so chance not losing it, but still chance take when record. Do few test before do large gameplay and losing everything. But like said doing a form of recovery is not 100%, but is free service out there but I would do that if really need that footage, outside of that. I would advise testing for future videos to make sure they are saving.

 

[koala]

When I clicked Stop Recording, the label on the button turned to Stopping Recording. I then pressed Pause and the button still said Stopping Recording. Then I rebooted and the recording was gone.

This description indicates that you might have overloaded the encoder during recording. If "stopping recording" doesn't go away after a few seconds, it's an indication the encoder wasn't able to catch up with what it was supposed to encode. Often, such recordings turn into slideshow-like videos, but with severe overloads, the encoder may stop working completely, resulting in a video that contains nothing. This recording is gone, it has never existed.

To avoid that situation in the future, make test recordings. Look at the notification in OBS that tells about encoder overload and change settings so that overload is avoided. Use Tools->Auto configuration wizard to get a working baseline configuration that is tailored to the computing power of your PC.