Which Video Damage Can Be Saved? A Quick Checklist

Before you download anything, spend thirty seconds matching your file to the table below. It tells you whether the damage is usually repairable, and whether to reach for Repair or Recovery.

Start with the symptom

What you see	What it usually means	What to use
Double-click does nothing, or the player shows an error	Damaged header or index	Repair
Black screen, but the file has a real size	Broken structure, data likely intact	Repair
Plays a few seconds, then freezes	Truncated or damaged index	Repair, then Recovery
Duration shows 0:00	Index or header unreadable	Recovery
File is smaller than it should be	Recording was cut off mid-write	Recovery
Picture is fine, audio is missing or out of sync	Damaged audio track or timing	Repair
File is 0 bytes	Nothing was ever written	Nothing to recover

Repair or Recovery: the one-line rule

Repair fixes the wrapper — the structure and index around footage that’s still there. Recovery rebuilds the footage itself when the wrapper is gone or the recording was cut short. If a file has a size and opens to something, try Repair first. If it’s truncated or shows 0:00, go to Recovery.

When to stop

Three situations are genuinely unsalvageable, and it’s worth knowing them so you don’t waste effort:

• The file is 0 bytes. There’s no data to work with.
• The footage was overwritten. New recordings or files reused the space.
• The recording never reached the card. A power loss before any write leaves nothing behind.

These are limits of physics, not of a particular tool. No software can reconstruct data that isn’t there.

The 30-second test

1. Check the file’s size. Zero? Stop.
2. Try to play it. If it opens at all, use Repair.
3. If it opens and freezes, or shows 0:00, use Recovery.
4. Preview the result before saving.

Next steps

• Full method, step by step: the complete guide to repairing a corrupted video.
• Cut off mid-recording? See recovering a truncated video.
• Picture OK, sound broken? See fixing video with no sound.