Video files
Video is often recorded in a camera (or phone) on FAT32 memory chips and SD cards. If accidentally deleted there can be significant problems recovering the data. There are many programs that claim such recovery, but actually fail. The problem is that most cameras do not store the files sequentially, in effect they are stored in a fragmented format. For instance, the GoPro Hero has been found to interleave both low and high resolution files. Sony PWM has been seen with hundreds of fragments. CnW has developed tools to recognise and hence reconstruct videos how ever they have been recorded. For more details see link on 3GP files

The MP4 wizard is still being developed, and so there can be occasional limitations. However, CnW are happy to work with anyone to try and resolve problems. The ultimate aim will be the following

● Detect and reconstruct out of sequence files - assuming blocks are all in sequence
● Create missing moov atoms
● Detect orphaned mdat atoms and create a playable video from these
● Reconstruct fragmented files
● Handle all variations of codecs

The above list is being developed . If it does not work with your memory device, CnW will happily process your memory chip for you (at no extra charge if you have purchased the software).

Recovery process - fully automated
The process is mainly designed for recovery from deleted FAT32 memory chips where the sequence is often lost when the files are deleted. There are several stages in the process, as shown below

Disk is scanned for all FTYP, MOOV, MDAT and FREE atoms. At the same time, when possible starts of AVC1 data runs are also detected
● The type of data structure is determined, eg MDAT_FTYP_MOOV_FREE
● The fragments are joined by a first attempt of repair
● The videos are verified
● If the video is not valid, a repair process is attempted to find out of order fragments
● The video are verified
● If the video is not valid, a reconstruction is attempted (not implemented for all formats) where fragments of video are encased in reconstructed control data, ie ftyp and moov atoms.

The above process can be slow, and may be enhanced by creating an image file of the memory chip first. Accessing ahard drive for processing is often faster than working directly with a memory chip. If is also good practice to have a copy, and not work with the original data.

If the process is used to recover videos from a hard drive then there may be issues with processing maybe multiple TBs of data. Solutions for this are being worked on.

Sanyo E1 Camera
The Sanyo E1 camera is detected automatically but has an interesting recovery issue. The moov atom is stored in several sections, and is not logically sequential. The recovery process has to find and reorder each atom to produce a playable video

Cameras supported
The following list is a partial list of cameras supported. It grows on a regular basis. Many more are detected automatically.

● Canon EOS 700 (and probably EOS 600 etc)
● Canon SX600 HS
● Canon HF-G30
● Fuji Film FinePix XP50
● GoPro Hero
● GoPro Hero 3+ Black
● GoPro Hero 4 Silver
● Kodak Zx1 Pocket Video camera
● Nikon Corporation D5100
● Samsung HMX200
● Samsung HMX300
● Samsung HMX-Q10
● Samsung Galaxy phone
● Sanyo E1
● Sony PMW-F3
● Sony PMW-150
● Panasonic Lumix GH4

GoPro deleted file recovery
The GoPro camera is both popular and very difficult to recover when the files have been deleted. This is because there are both low and high resolution files stored, along with an audio stream for each file. Simple file carving methods fails, CnW resolves these issues and recovers good working files, with video and audio. Also see our new dedicated GoPro program www.goprorecovery.co.uk


Family of video types
There is a group of video files that all follow a general pattern. These include MP4, 3GP, MOV. They are basically Quick Time frameworks around a video and audio data stream.

Demo operation - displays thumbnail
A view thumbnail preview screen will display the start of videos - this feature is not supported for all video types but under development the supported list will grow. This does work with the demo - download demo here.