May the Gods of WesLAN save me!! :( (corrupted file recovery

[legmog]

Hello everyone!
I am a desperate desperate man in need of some serious tech help. I'll start with the SUPER TL;DR...

... how does fix .movs?

Normal TL;DR: Video Camera (Canon 550D). Brought a naff SD Card which didn't have enough write speed. Sometimes... It would record fine.
Other times, the recording would randomly stop dead with an error message on screen. When THIS happened, the .mov files of the recording will not play. MUST fix the .mov's!!!
</TL;DR>

This is of a ruddy wedding... The ceremony no less. A HUGE punch to the gut.

The .mov file IS on the card, but when you try to play it (both on the camera AND on the computer) it will not work.

- Quicktime Player states 'Error -2048: Couldn't open the file MVI_2539.MOV' because it is not a file that QuickTime understands.'

- VLC Player opens but does not play anything...

- Adobe After Effects states 'File cannot be opened, it may be in an unsupported format'...

You get the picture...

But here's the thing....

The files ARE identified as being Quicktime files on my computer. AND... They are all at different file sizes conducent with what you'd expect of HD video, ranging from 50MB to 3GB.
Usually when a file is totally monged beyond repair, its file size is like 1KB or something. But they fact that these .mov files have the differing sizes they do, seems to suggest to me that the data IS there.... It just cannot be accessed.

I have read online, that when you 'stop' recording a video... The camera will 'index' the file? Which from what I gather, is essentially giving the file information that allows computers to 'understand' it. Because the SD card issue kinda OVERRIDES the video recording and instantly shuts it off (like a jerk reaction), this somehow causes the 'indexing' to NOT occur.

Hence, from what I gather (or at least I HOPE!), the data is indeed intact. But without this indexing, computers will not be able to read it.

I have however downloaded a few free 'video repair' applications online and am having no luck
Even the supposed video repair apps don't recognise the ruddy files!
Yet I am so sure there is hope!

So does anyone have any ideas, advice, words of wisdom or even solutions to fixing this? I am absolutely desperate to fix this issue
ALL I want to do is get these .Mov files working... Much love to ANYBODY who can help!

[Freelance]

Take a look at some transcoding or codec identification programs, virtualdub (or whatever the modern equivalent is), etc.

As with all recovery operations, make sure you're not working on the original file as well

[bloodtobleed]

Upload one of the 5MB files to Dropbox (or similar) and I'll have a play around with it and see what can be done. I'm sure some other guys (Jani maybe) might be able to help as well.

[legmog]

Hey peeps, thanks for the response!
However, the Gods have smiled and granted me a solution!
The issue is very convoluted and extremely niche... But I guess for posterity, I'll go ahead and say what it was, just in case anyone else encounters the same set of events...

So I had about 10 corrupt files...

Chronologically, the first corrupted file was 3.2GB, which was the whole service.... And then a myriad of files between 20 / 50MB, which were the result of me trying again and again to record, only to have it cut out seconds later.

I was using 'Remo repair MOV' for trying to fix the corrupted files.

I figured 'Ok, I WON'T use the 3.2GB version because that's massive.... I'll FIRST try one of the smaller 20MB files for ''testing / figuring out how to work the repair app'' purposes, because that will calculate faster. Once I succesfully convert a small file, I'll then apply the same process to the large 3.2GB file.' A canary down the mine tactic if you will....

However... Chronologically speaking, the larger 3.2GB file of the service was the FIRST time the 'cut out' occured. This first cut out must have basically 'munted' the SD Card true and proper... So all the teeny tiny panic stricken recordings I made AFTER that, were well and truly slozzled.

So metaphorically speaking, the small file I was using for testing... My canary, was already dead before it even got lowered down into the mine.

Hence why EVERY single repair app I tried was just spitting it back out.

Once I whacked in the larger 3.2GB file, the repair apps had no problem fixing it up until the point where the cut out occured. Thankfully it didn't cut out until the final 10 seconds... So I've missed the 'I now pronounce you man and wife! You may kiss the bride!' which is a shame.... But hell, at least 98% of the ceremony is saved!!

A classic case of 'barking up the wrong tree' in so far as problem solving goes.