cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

*Emergency* Video footage missing on CF Card

impactfuze
Contributor

Shot footage today on a rented Canon 5D Mark III

The footage was checked and verified on set.

Audio and video were perfect and functional (on the camera).

Took the CF card home to transfer files to the mac and the card was empty and the footage was gone.

I have raised a ticket with Canon customer support, But any sort of help or suggestion is welcome as I am working on a very thin timeline.

Thank you so much.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

impactfuze
Contributor

Hey guys, boy it has been a weird 24 hours but I finally managed to get the footage, make it workable and send it across. Here is my solution map:

  • I tried several expensive recovery software and most of them ended up being a huge waste of money and essentially garbage in my case. Photo rec a free software seemed to help me more than Recuva or Data Rescue 5 and it was sad that I spent all that money.

  • The problem still remained that the videos got stuck on the first frame of the video and I was greeted with an uncomfortable loud white noise. It was really sad to see my footage but have it not work.

  • Hours of research later I found out that while data recovery software might get the data back, they might not be able to re-encode the video to it's original format and might need supplemental repairing from a working video from the same camera.

  • I found a software called Grau GmbH which claimed to do this however I did not have the camera with me (since it was a rental). However in my hard drive I did have some random footage that I had taken with my friend's 7D. (This is highly not optimal but my circumstances were desperate).

  • Using the canon 7D video as a supplement to fix it, almost like magic, the grau software managed to fix the video and get it running again. Success, but there was a problem with the playback and the video and audio did not sync.

  • The audio and video appeared to be playing at different speeds and simple syncing of starting frames and/or adding a delay to it did not seem to remedy the situation. For this, I wish I could research a better fix, but since I probably had 10 minutes before giving it to the clients, I spliced the video up (it was an interview) and fit it, resyncing it every 15 second intervals and cut some ambiance from the end of the video to make it seem natural.

In the end it worked and wow... The client has no idea what we went through to be able to get this footage safely delivered :') !!

Thanks for everyone who helped out and I do hope this helps someone in the future.

Cheers

View solution in original post

13 REPLIES 13

diverhank
Authority

Are you sure the video is not on the other card?

================================================
Diverhank's photos on Flickr

yes,

The rental company took out the SD card before handing us the camera.

We were expected to come up with our on CF card.

Ray-uk
Whiz

Are you sure the card is empty or is the file in a format that your mac doesn't recognise.

 

Empty

Empty Card.PNG

The file could still be there, try using a file recovery program. There are various free recovery programs available, a google search should find them.

I just purchased Data Rescue 5 and Recuva Neither of them were able to work 😞 !!

They succeeded in getting a weird file of the video with pink noise playing in the background with a couple of stutter frames of the video that I shot. Both failed miserably in getting my file.

Now I am 110$ poorer and about to lose my first big job.


@impactfuze


They succeeded in getting a weird file of the video with pink noise playing in the background with a couple of stutter frames of the video that I shot. Both failed miserably in getting my file.



Well at least you now know that the file was there but it is just too corrupted to be able to rescue, not much consolation though. I think I would bin that CF card rather than trust it again for anything important.

Waddizzle
Legend
Legend

@impactfuzewrote:

Shot footage today on a rented Canon 5D Mark III

The footage was checked and verified on set.

Audio and video were perfect and functional (on the camera).

Took the CF card home to transfer files to the mac and the card was empty and the footage was gone.

I have raised a ticket with Canon customer support, But any sort of help or suggestion is welcome as I am working on a very thin timeline.

Thank you so much.


Maybe during your trip home your card was exposed to a strong magnetic field.  

You use the term “transfer”, not copy.  Could they have transferred to a folder that is different from the one you expected?

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

TCampbell
Elite
Elite

The camera doesn’t have any capability to store images internally... they can only be saved to one of the two card slots (either the CF card or the SD card).  Diverhank asked if there was any possibility you saved the images to the ‘other’ card.  From your answer, I’m inferring that you only inserted one card (if so then the camera has no choice where to save the file).

 

Normally when I import my images (I use Lightroom) I choose the “copy” option (they have “move”, “add”, and “copy” ... “move” causes the camera to do a copy, but then erase the original image.  “Add” causes the lightroom Library to manage the file in-place (without copying it).  “Add” would be in used in situations where you manage the organization of your photos on disk and don’t copy them to the Lightroom masters folder.  This might be used when you have lots of disks.  “Copy” is the safe choice because it doesn’t touch the original image... it just makes a copy in the Lightroom masters folder.  

 

Using “copy” gives you the option to make sure the images really did end up on your computer before you make any changes to the memory card.

 

If the images are not on the memory card, it makes me wonder if they have actually been copied to your computer... just not where you expect to find them.

 

You might search your hard drive for files dated the day of the import and see if they turn up.

 

Also... did you only have ONE card? (Is there any possibility you put the wrong card in the computer and aren’t actually using the very same card that was in the camera?)

 

Best of luck.

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
Announcements