7D Video File Recovery on Mac?

[Jonathan Ziegler]

Well, that camera uses DCF 2.0 (from the manual) – so the single picture is just a sort of preview built into the file. The final file is some kind of MP4 AVC, BUT the file type should still be MOV. Here’s a question: can you play the video on the camera with the card in (I’m assuming you mean the file is still on the card anyhow)? If so, the file is probably just fine and you should be able to re-transfer the file.

If you have Time Machine, it may be able to help, but I’m guessing you don’t use it – frankly I’ve not had to use TM for that specific purpose (knock on wood).

I found another thread elsewhere on this that mentions 7D file recovery (the big one dated Aug 20, 2009 at the very bottom). He mentions software at the end called PhotoRec (freeware: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec ) which saved pix and movies. Talks a lot about bad SD cards, too.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=730841

Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293

[Greg Barringer]

I don’t have an answer for recovery of the card. My only advice is to buy an external HD and set up Time Machine. It would have saved the day here.

[Jeff Petersen]

thanks for responding jonathan. After i initially saved the files off of the CF card and checked that they were copied onto the HD i deleted them off of the CF card. i do video as my job so i have to use those cards almost as soon as they are done being downloaded. i had filled 2-32Gig and 2 8Gig on that shoot last night…so once they are on the HD i deleted the cards. Nothing has been written to them yet-since i made my error this morning. Unless CF cards work way differently then i understand-i thought that deleting them just tells the card that that space is free to write in now. i don’t think it writes over it unless you format or take new pictures or video.

my same thinking was being applied to the HD i was using. right after seeing that i had thrown away the wrong files i stopped writing to that disk and have only been trying to recover to a separate disk.

there was no time for time machine to have jumped in on this. i do use it and it works well in most situations. unfortunately i was basically still in the process of “getting the data” when i accidently deleted the wrong files. (i was making space available for my converting the files to ProRes).

the files themselves-not having been deleted do come up normally as .mov-i have no idea why they are appearing to file recovery as .jpg??

All that said, i’ll check out the link you suggested and maybe someone has some of those answers.
thanks,
jp

[Jonathan Ziegler]

I started looking into the Photorec software more. I’ve now downloaded it and I’m having a try at “recovering” files I’ve deliberately deleted. Seems to work pretty well recovering image files from my Rebel xt CF card. Since it’s specific to media files (and media cards), I think it’s your best bet right now. Check it out: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293

[Jeff Petersen]

thanks again Jonathan-i have been investigating PhotoRec as well. My experience in the terminal window is minimal, so i had a hard time understanding what it all meant-and in fact still can’t identify all of my different drives from the listed choices (they all look the same to me without my naming conventions)…However, i followed the “how to” steps from the author step by step, And Was able to identify the small CF card from the choices, so i ran the software on that.

my results were…interesting…i was able to recover a Large number of my files Perfectly…But Not All. Unfortunately, the ones i was able to recover, i didn’t need. The ones i needed…which were all created on the same day, same camera, all handled exactly the same…were not recovered. I’m thinking that perhaps there may be a files size limitation to that program??? i have not yet been able to compare all the files exactly yet, since that was very late last night–and i have to Make new stuff during the day today, but that will be what i check into next.

i Know that the files i need were quite large-(Multiple GB Interview sessions) so that very well might be what limited the success of that program. i have a few other recovery software programs in demo mode that i’m investigating in the background too. Whatever i find out i’ll post here to perhaps help someone else in the future.

thanks again for your time and brain power on this.
jeff

Jeff Petersen

[Jonathan Ziegler]

Jeff, it seems there is a bit of hunt and peck involved. I think the difference is that OSX sees the drive and the partition as separate (guessing here). I delete some files from my CF card while plugged into a CF reader, then empty trash securely. Opened the second instance of my CF (based on the size of 4110MB – 4GB CF card) and it seemed to find it, but I didn’t go through the whole process. I’m not a huge fan of terminal window apps, either, but if it recovers a vital file, I’m game. I got the file system wrong, too, at first. Forgot it was FAT for Canon. I think the 7D is FAT32, but don’t quote me on it – could be FAT16. If you figure the rest out, I’m interested to know what happens – I’m sure I will run into this again. Beyond that, I’m going to remember to run Time Machine before any large file deletions. 🙂

Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293

[Jeff Petersen]

i’m happy to report-that although it cost me some money-i was able to retrieve my files-and all look just right so far. the footage recovered was well worth the price of the software-as was being able to continue working on New things instead of dealing with this for over a day-

I had a great customer experience with the tech support at Prosoft, the makers of Data Rescue 3. Mike, the support guy had me send him 3 other files that came out of my 7D and he was able to delete them and recover them. and Low and Behold–so was i.

Not only did i get good technical service-Even before i had purchased the software-Mike also called me back direct and stayed after his regular work hours to make sure that he had finished checking this out for me. That is the kind of person/company that i actually Like to support by buying their software.

in the end it has to work though-and i was very impressed with the program overall. i was glad he talked me through some specific scanning and retrieving preferences-to make sure my larger files were seen. you had to set the file size limit to something other than the default and it was not a number i would have guessed. you have to set it for 0 to make No limitations to the file size. i may have been quite frustrated with that, had he not informed me of it.

my favorite feature of the software in particular was the “File IQ” feature. with this you can import 5 or so files of the same format you are looking for and it will setup a special user search parameter based on those files. Not only did it find my files based on that data, but it also had them all identified and sorted into their own File folder section-again-based on the custom files i entered. Would it have found them without that-Probably-but it was pretty cool finding them based on that for this particular job.

the software costs about $100 to unlock the demo that you can get now. The demo let’s you see what it appears to have found on your drive, but the Preview feature did not work on my larger files in Demo mode. Most of the previews worked just fine after i purchased the software though. it will also let you keep your initial scan too, so you don’t have to start the process all over again once you pay. i’m sure there are many other neat features i have yet to discover on this program, but right now the fact that it seems to have worked is the best one.
thanks for all the help.

check out Data Rescue 3 at Prosoftengineering.com

Jeff Petersen

[Jonathan Ziegler]

Sweeeeet! 🙂

Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293

[Uli Plank]

I can only second this! Data Rescue has saved the a.. of some of our students a lot of times – usually they learn to make backups the hard way, even if we tell them about it’s importance from day one…

Recently I was able to recover footage for a friend who had been severly hit by a fault of the controller in his RAID (yes, don’t even trust a ‘secure’ RAID) and been told by a ‘professional’ data rescue service that his chances were very low. Data Rescue made his day!

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Ben Bledsoe]

Definitely i would say that i had a chance with Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery Software which is an easy and efficient Mac recovery tool.Recently my important project files got deleted and i was really worried about getting those files back.But thanks to Stellar Pheonix which saves my month work…Thanks