EOS R6 Video corrupted to .DAT file

[cameraguy17]

 Hey everyone, so I had a recent wedding where a file corrupted of the bride walking down the aisle. It turned into a .DAT file 😬

I’ve been trying various free softwares, and even bought Wondershare Recoverit, but even with advanced video recovery it only turns into what looked like a really badly scratched DVD.

As a side note, it's an odd problem I've been having with the R6; no matter what battery or card I try it happens to corrupt some files with an error. I'm not sure what's causing the issue but the file is what I'm just focusing on recovering at the moment. Until I finish my switch to Sony, I'll have to use my tank-sized Blackmagic 6K Pro for weddings.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what to try next in recovering the file? Thanks in advance!

[BurnUnit]

Aren't the actual videos saved as .MOV files or something similar? Does the .DAT file look large enough (like 500 MB or larger) to contain maybe a minute long video clip? I seem to recall that .DAT files tend to be relatively small.

It doesn't happen very often but sometimes an incorrect file extension can get attached to a file. I would make a copy of the .DAT file to your desktop, give it a new name, and change the file name extension to .MOV or .RAW or .AVC or whatever file type(s) the R6 can output. Then see if the renamed file copy can be opened with your video viewing or editing software. Avoid doing any experimenting with your original file!

[qfluet]

Having almost the exact same issue as OP but with a Canon T5i. My .DAT is showing up as 2.48GB, but I tried the file extension change and it didn't work. Any ideas?

[kvbarkley]

This seems to happen sometimes. (Just search for .DAT in the search bar), but I don't think that there was ever any reported resolution.

[rs-eos]

Did you record the video to both card slots (simultaneous record)?  If not, definitely do that for the future.

Video is typically recorded to a folder (container) containing numerous files.  So if all you have is a single file ending in .DAT, that is most likely not something that could be recovered.

[cameraguy17]

Yes I record to both memory cards regularly, but it was a single DAT file on both cards. 😬  Thanks for your help though.

[Derby_44]

Hi,

I am having the same problem for an import video I took for work. Did you ever figure out a solution for the file?

Thanks in advance.

[qfluet · Accepted solution]

I had to employ a recovery service recc'd in a similar thread, "Treasured Video Repair Service". What a sketchy site but what amazing people, they got me my video and it was $90, but the preview stills were full quality and the turnaround was less than 4hrs

[Derby_44]

Thanks, I'll see how it works.

[JBG]

I had a large video dat file due to battery going flat unexpectedly. I couldn't do anything with it on my computer but when I put the SD card back in the camera the file showed up with question mark. When I tried to play it the camera offered to repair it, and converted it to mp4, which worked fine.