Canon EOS video SLR

How to recover Canon video files

In Blog, Memory Stick/Card Recovery Case Study by Administrator

Canon video file data recovery

Modern Canon video cameras, or SLRs, with video capability, produce high definition video files. They are widely used by amateur and professional videographers.

CDR – Manchester Data Recovery Services – receives a considerable number of memory cards which have either had data deleted, been formatted, or suffer corruption of the FAT filesystem.

On many occasions, the owner of the device has attempted recovery of data by using free or paid for data recovery software, or a PC Shop / IT Support company has attempted the same. Unfortunately, they find that whilst they can recover the start of the video file (.MOV) the file will not playback. The video file is severely corrupt with ‘white noise’ sound. However, any JPEG images on the memory card are recovered OK.

Complex video files

The difficulty data recovery software has in recovering Canon MOV video files relates to the software’s ability to locate the start of the file (known as the ‘header’) and the body of the file. Most file types (e.g. .DOC, .JPG etc.) have a distinctive header, body and also, sometimes a footer. It is difficult for software to detect the differences in the Canon video file header and body. As a result, the recovered file is usually corrupt.

CDR must give credit to ACELab for developing a solution to this in August 2016. ACELab supply professional data recovery equipment worldwide, and are based in Russia. CDR uses the most up to date professional data recovery equipment from ACELab and other suppliers.

Below is a schematic published by ACELab explaining the structure of a Canon video file.

Video file recovery method

The recovery process for the Canon video files is straight forward when using Data Extractor as part of the PC3000 Suite. A ‘raw’ recovery of memory card is performed which find the file headers for known file types (video and images). Once this is complete a transformation is performed on the Canon video files to allow for successful recovery of these files. In summary, if the correct equipment is in place and up to date then a professional data recovery company can achieve good results quickly. Using software downloaded from the internet will not help you recover these Canon video files.

CANON video file recovery PC3000 Data Extractor