Guide
The videos on your SD card are gone or won't open
When the problem isn't a single file but a card that lost track.
Stop using that card, right now
If the videos are gone, or the folders are empty, or the files show as 0 bytes, the data is almost always still physically on the card: what broke is the list saying where it lives. Every new write can take over exactly that space and delete it for real.
Take the card out, set it aside and work on a full copy: made with a card reader and a program that copies sector by sector, without asking the card what it holds. From then on the original is never touched again.
What actually happened
A card keeps two separate things: the real data, and the index saying which file it belongs to. A hot removal, a power dip or a bad sector can damage the index while leaving the data intact. The system, which trusts the index, shows you an empty folder or a 0-byte file.
This is different from a badly recorded file: here it isn't the video's internal structure that's missing, it's the link between the name and its data. It's tackled with data recovery software, not with video repair.
First things first: is your file recoverable?
The check takes two seconds, it's free, and the video is never uploaded anywhere: the analysis runs inside your browser, on your own computer.
See if it's recoverableWhat not to do, under any circumstances
- Don't accept the system's offer to repair or format the card.
- Don't use the card for more footage until you've recovered what you need.
- Don't install recovery programs onto the card itself.
- Don't run several different programs one after another on the original: always work on the copy.
After recovery the files often still won't open
That's normal, and it doesn't mean recovery failed: data recovery tools fish the blocks back out but don't rebuild the videos' internal structure, so they're left without an index. That's exactly the case handled afterwards.
If the recovered files won't open, run them through the free check: it says straight away whether there are real images inside or whether the block that came back was empty — and in the second case there's nothing to pay.
Questions I get every time
Which recovery software should I use?
PhotoRec is free, runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and it's the one I recommend first: it hunts for blocks directly on the card, ignoring the broken index. It isn't pretty, but it does the job.
Recovery gave me hundreds of files with no names.
That's normal behaviour: without an index the original names are lost. Send me the largest ones, they're the right candidates.
The computer doesn't even recognise the card.
Then the fault is electronic, not logical, and it needs a lab with the right equipment. I'll tell you that plainly rather than try: there's nothing I can do in software here.
If you'd rather I handled it
You send me the file and the reference video, I send you a preview of the recovered one, and only then do you decide whether to pay. Twenty euros per video, thirty-five for up to five files from the same device.
You only pay if the video turns up.