AVI video recovery software wizard functions
AVI video was very popular with compact cameras - though now has been replaced by the 3GP / MP4 group of formats and AVCHD. AVI is also sometimes used on security cameras.
The wizard has three functions
● Recover sequential files
● Recover fragmented files
● Reconstruct the index for incomplete files
● Recover files where the header (RIFF) has been deleted
An AVI file is in three main sections, a header, area of video and an index at the end. Fortunately the header is typically small and so does not get fragmented. The data area can be fragmented, and if the file was not finalised, or the camera had a problem, the index may not be created. CnW Recovery wizard function will address these problems to create a playable AVI video file.
The AVI wizard can be tested by downloading the demo. The recovery process starts by scanning the complete memory chip to find fragments of files. Files are then reconstructed. It is very common for an AVI file to be recorded physically out of sequence. This is because the camera stores the video first, and then writes the header physically at the end of the data. Logically, the FAT32 allocation table is written so the header logically appears first. When a file is deleted, this layout information is also deleted and so a simple data carving process will not recover AVI files. CnW Recovery will rescue such video.
A typical reconstruction will find a file header and then track through the frames to build up the file. If not complete, an index will be regenerated.
Once all files with headers have been found, the disk scan will be checked for indexes that are not associated with headers. These partial files will then be rebuilt, and a new index generated.
The result will be a large number of playable, recovered AVI files.