Moved video file to SD Card...Cancelled move now video doesn't play

[jonesfilms]

I filmed a video (mp4) on my phone about 14 mins or so in total. It was working fine when i played it via the gallery.

I HATE using Android File Transfer on my mac....it's pretty awful so I tend to copy/move my files to my SD card. I tried to do that with the video file, it was taking far longer than expected so I cancelled the move....ever since then the video file is showing up (not as a thumbnail image) but instead of a black screen with a movie logo...when I click the file (no matter what video player i try to use) it says "Cannot play video"

Also when i try to move said file to my SD card it only shows up as 0.00 MB in size...but when i click on it in GALLERY and select details/settings it says almost 2 GB. Where can i find or recover the file? Did I really just cut the video in half when I cancelled the move? What are my options if any. Should i try transferring via a PC computer? When I use a program like AIRDROID It shows up under videos, with it's length and size displayed but it will not let me download it to my computer.

 

[srkmagnus]

Seems like the file isn't actually being transferred over. Have you tried a wireless solution, such as WiFi File Explorer - Google Play Store? That would be a good alternative to using the Android File Transfer method.

Otherwise, you can possibly upload to Drive, Dropbox or other service and download to the computer from there. Hope this helps.

 

[lterry913]

See if it a transferred to sd card with a file manager app and move it back to phone...when I move music to sd card it disappears from music library but it's on external sd and phone won't recognize it...I don't know if that will help you get the video back at least. Then you can try to move it to computer from internal phone memory

 

[TenshiNo]

Sounds like you might have a corrupted file. Cancelling the move *might* have caused it, but it really shouldn't have. In reality "moving" a file just copies the file, and *then* deletes the original after the file has been copied. If you canceled the move before it finished copying, then the original file should still be in the same place and be fine.

The other option is that you've got a problem with your SD card. It's certainly not unheard of for SD cards to fail. Had it happen to myself a few years ago. Having trouble transferring to and from the SD card can be an early warning that it's having issues.

So, like Iterry said, the first thing you should do is to use a file manager and confirm if you still have the original file on the phone's internal storage. ES File Explorer from the Play Store is a good, free option. If you do, see if that will play. If the only copy you have is the one on the SD card, and it's reporting 0.0MB, I recommend trying to get everything off the SD card, since you may be running up to a failure. If the OS *thought* the file copied correctly, but was unable to verify it (that might be why the status didn't show complete) then it *might* have deleted the original, leaving the corrupted version on the SD card.

Unfortunately, a video file is more than just a stream of data. Parts of the file (called a header) tell a player thing like the format of the audio/video, how many frames per second to play back at, and how to interleave (combine) the two streams together during playback. If the player encounters data it doesn't expect in the header, it will likely just give you an error that it can't play the file. For compressed video streams, there are also what's called "b-frames" which help keep things in sync. Usually, corrupted b-frames just result in graphical anomalies during playback but, depending on the codecs (stream format) and the container (file format) this kind of corruption could result in the file not being playable.

If you find the file, and it has size, but isn't playable, you could try and bring the file onto your computer and run it through software that will try and rebuild the header for you. Try downloading VirtualDubMOD and opening the file in that software. It's free, and you can download a copy from Doom9.net - The Definitive DVD Backup Resource. Just click the "Downloads" link in the left-hand navigation, and then go to the AVI Editors section. There are numerous tutorials out there on how to use it, but it's a pretty powerful video editor.

Beyond all that, unfortunately, you might be out of luck. Either way, I recommend copying anything important off your SD card, just in case. Any other questions, feel free to ask.

Good luck.