[Andrew Smith]

Ok everyone. Here was my problem. I accidentally deleted several family movies directly off my 7D. Quit writing on the card right away. Tried recovery software after recovery software, even coughed up $80 between two of them. (stellar phoenix, file juicer, mac photo recovery, photo rescue, video repair)
All recovered something, some just a single jpeg frame. Some a single frame with all the extra file size of the full MOV.
Could not play or convert any of the files. Searched over and over for various ways to recover these MOVs, including this forum and thread. No luck. Just as I was about to give up I found this guys post (from another forum) and followed his directions along with the corresponding software.
Yes, it used Terminal, which scared me a bit. But it was actually very simple. But, I let it run over night. When I came down just now it was still running. I was just qoing to quit it and give up. Then I noticed a new folder on my desktop of the files recovered so far. And there they were, tried playing them, and they WORKED!!! Still had to convert them as usual through streamclip, but they look fine.
This guy and this post saved my butt, hopefully someone reading this can save a ton of time and get to the point.

https://www.productionapprentice.com/tutorials/general/recovering-deleted-video-files/

There ya go. Good luck!!