How to Repair Corrupted Quicktime Files

A few weeks ago I participated in a three-camera shoot of a concert using two 7Ds and a 550D. When I tried to transfer the files to a computer, I was shocked to discover that two of the files were corrupt. Worse still, they happened in the same scene from two different cameras, which also happened to be the most important song of the concert. What horrible luck. I have been shooting with DSLRs for quite some time, and I have never had a corrupt file, much less two on the same night, at the same time, on two different cameras! I immediatly began to research how to fix them, but found the info on the internet to be a bit lacking. I hope this post will give someone with the same problem a slightly easier time. 

Repairing Quicktime files for $
The UI of Treasured by Aero Quartet 
One clue that the data was salvagable was that, even though Quicktime (or any other program for that matter) couldn't open them, the files were of an appropriate size (about 2GB). The first solution I found was a program called Treasured from Aero Quartet. I downloaded it for free, ran it on one of the files and it immediately showed me the recovered frames. It was only then that I realized that you have to pay per file with this solution. I have read online that people have had good results with this program and you only pay if they can fix the file but I thought if Treasured can show me the frames, there must be a way to fix it for free.

Repairing Quicktime files for free
After some time I found two free methods which worked for me. The first is very simple, but only worked for one file. What perplexed me about the corrupt file from my camera (the 550dD) was that I had watched it in the camera the night before. I put the chip back in, and sure enough, the file that would not play in Quicktime played back in the camera perfectly. On both the 7D and the 550D you can trim videos in the camera. I trimmed a frame or two from the heads and tails and chose the option to save a new file. Bingo! The new file played back perfectly in Quicktime. Excited, I put the file from the 7D on to my SD card, but the 550D couldn't read it. I had my friend try the same thing from the original CF in her 7D, but the 7D was unable to read the file as well. Damn. 

The UI of HD Video Repair by Grau GbR

Eventually I found another solution: A free program called HD Video Repair from a company called Grau GbR. The program looks complex, but really is quite simple. You select the file you want to fix and as well as a reference file (which is a non-corrupt quicktime from the same camera).  You then click "Scan" and wait. It is hard to tell that it is doing anything once you click scan, but be patient it is working. The program seems like it was relatively quickly hacked together, so it lacks some polish. Eventually, the filename will appear in the space below the scan button. By default, the repair file will go to a folder called repaired in the same location as the corrupt file. The resulting repaired Quicktime still seemed to have some codec glitches in my case, but converting it to ProRes seem to fix that. The audio was also out of sync, which I imagine is fixable in the advanced settings, but since I am using an external recording anyway, it didn't matter to me. HD Video Repair is Donationware

TL;DR
Repair Corrupt Quicktime Files for Free by: 

Repair Corrupt Quicktime Files at a Price

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10 Years with Final Cut Pro

It was a bit surprising to me, but I recently realized that I have been using Final Cut Pro for 10 years as of Fall 2010. I can see no better time to take a personal look back a this software that has been so influential on my life as well as an entire industry.

Final Cut Pro 1.0
My first exposure to Final Cut Pro was during my senior year in high school, back in 2000. The previous semester, the school had begun a Digital Media class and Final Cut Pro was the key component.  I signed up for the class as one of my many "slack-off" electives. We were shooting with Canon GL-2's and Sony VX-1000s and learning the basics of logging and capturing. I actually didn't spend too much time with FCP1.0 because the school uprgraded to 2.0 mid semester. One funny memory about 1.0 is that the Dither Dissolve transition would cause the program to crash instantly. It was fun to tell unexpecting classmates "Dude, check out the Dither Dissolve, its awesome!"

Final Cut Pro 2.0
This was the version where I really began to understand editing. I made a whole lot of bad films my senior year in highschool but with each one, I understood what I was doing a little bit more. I remember one project where we had to use at least 3 layers and some effects. My piece had 5 layers and at least two effects on each. One minute of DV footage took over 5 hours to render on our dual processor G4's (still on OS9). Now we can edit full HD on a laptop. It was also around this time, when our teacher had the OSX beta on one of the computers and when I decided that Macs weren't all that bad after all.

Final Cut Pro 3.0
Version 3.0 was the first Final Cut Pro that I owned. In community college I decided that I really did enjoy filmmaking and decided to buy the student version so I could experiment with my own projects. I also enrolled in an adult-education class in video production to continue my learning. It was around this time that I decided I wanted to go to film school. My knowledge of Final Cut Pro gave me a good head start at Brooks Institute of Photography. Final Cut 3.0 was the first version to include Cinema Tools which allowed for film workflows. I used this tool with the telecine material after some 16mm projects. I also saw Walter Murch speak about editing Cold Mountain using Final Cut Pro 3.0 at the LAFCPUG.

Final Cut Pro 4.0 and Final Cut Pro HD (4.5)
This was a marginal update for me and I didn't use it very much. I do remember that that changed the user interface in a little bit strange way. The free update to 4.5 added DVCPROHD editing capabilities, which by todays standards, is hardly HD. It was a good step forward in HD editing though. I wasn't editing any HD projects at this point in time however.

 

 

Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Pro 5.0
I was going to graduate from Brooks Institute very soon, so when Final Cut Studio came out, I took advantage of my student discount and bought it. Final Cut Studio was the first time they marketed a suite of software, the most notable addition being Motion 1.0. I saw a early preview of Motion at a LAFCPUG meeting and was impressed. I still think it is a great program, if not as fully capable as After Effects. I used this version of Final Cut Pro longer than any other version. My documentary H.R. Giger's Sanctuary was cut with it. The biggest feature in verson 5, in my opinion, was the ability to edit HDV footage natively. Which made working with cameras like the Sony Z1. Anyone who used this version dreaded the final render of a HDV project and the "Conforming Video" progress bar -- it was damn slow.

Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Pro 6
Color was the big product addition to the Final Cut Pro suite, however the biggest upgrade, and probably the most important in FCP history was the introduction of ProRes 422. This "visually lossless", variable bit-rate codec allowed for editing full HD, raster video with the file size of uncompressed SD. The codec has had such an impact that AVID now supports it and the ARRI Alexa has the ability to shoot directly to this format. I use ProRes422 video every day.

 

Final Cut Pro 7
In this version, for some reason, Apple reset the name back to Final Cut Studio (it should be Final Cut Studio 3). Anyway, after suffering with FCP 5 at home for too long, I decided to buy FCP 7 for myself. Using ProRes at jobs made me really want that capability at home. I am glad I waited for version 7 though because Apple dropped the price significantly on this verson. None of the new features excited me too much, though the inclusion of new flavors of ProRes were quite nice. I use ProRes422(LT) all the time for VDSLR footage since their bitrate is lower than that anyway.

I am looking forward to whatever Jaw-dropping news Apple has coming this year. I am hoping for something big. We'll see.

This article was originally written for and posted to www.swissfilmmakers.com