You recovered a deleted video — and it won't play. What now?
A recovery tool brought your deleted video back: right name, right size — and it won't play, or plays a moment and goes black. Some of these files are genuinely fixable. Some are empty shells that no service can fix, whatever their marketing says. This page is about telling the two apart honestly.
Why undeleted videos come back broken
Deleting a file removes the filesystem's entry for it, not the data — but a large video is rarely stored in one continuous run. When an undelete tool reassembles the pieces, fragments can land in the wrong order or shifted from where the video's internal index says they should be. The result is a file whose index is intact but points at the wrong bytes: players trust the index, decode garbage, and give up — or show a black frame.
The fixable case: real frames, wrong alignment
If the frames survived, this is repairable — even without a reference file. Instead of trusting the (now wrong) index, the repair walks the actual data, finds the real frame boundaries, and rebuilds the mapping from what is genuinely on disk. Misassembled-but-real recoveries, including files where only part of the index went stale, come back this way with audio intact.
The unfixable case: the empty shell
Modern flash storage (SSDs and many SD cards) actively discards the contents of deleted files — a feature called TRIM. The undelete tool still sees the old entry and dutifully writes out a file of the right name and size, but the storage returns blanks: the file is wall-to-wall repeating filler with zero real frames in it. We measure this directly — how much genuinely distinct content the file contains — and when there's nothing there, the free analysis says so plainly. No one can conjure your footage out of zeros; the honest answer just saves you the fee.
A quick self-test: compress the recovered file into a ZIP. Real video barely compresses; if your multi-gigabyte "recovery" zips down to almost nothing, it's filler.
The deceptive case: plays a moment, then dies
Some recovered files decode a brief flash of video and then go black — which looks tantalizingly close to working. Sometimes real footage continues behind the failure and can be re-mapped; sometimes that flash is all that exists. We verify which one you have by proving actual decodable frames in the data, not by hoping — and the free analysis tells you which one, before anything else happens.
If it's an empty shell, we tell you that for free. Free during the beta: there is no payment step today. When paid recovery eventually launches, you will pay only if we hand back a file that actually plays.
Frequently asked questions
The recovered file has the right name and size — why won't it play?
Undelete tools restore the filesystem entry, which carries the name and size, separately from the data. The pieces of the video may have been reassembled in the wrong order — fixable — or the storage may have already discarded the data, leaving a file full of blank filler, which nothing can fix. The free analysis tells you which one you have.
Can you repair a recovered video that is all zeros?
No — and neither can anyone else. Zeros carry no information; there are no frames to rebuild. We measure how much genuinely distinct data the file contains and tell you honestly when the answer is none, before anything else happens. RepairMyVideo is free during the beta: there is no payment step today.
The video plays for a second and then goes black. Is it fixable?
Sometimes. Real footage may continue behind the point where playback dies, just misaligned from the index — that's fixable. Or the opening moment may be the only real data in the file. The analysis proves which case it is by decoding the actual data rather than guessing.
Should I keep using the card or drive I deleted the video from?
Stop writing to it immediately. Every new file, photo, or even a camera powering up can overwrite the exact sectors your video occupies. Recover first (or image the card to your computer), then reuse it.
What does it cost?
Nothing today. RepairMyVideo is free during the beta: there is no payment step, and analysis, repair and download all cost nothing. When paid recovery eventually launches, analysis and diagnosis will stay free, and payment will apply only to a successful repair, meaning a file verified to actually play, not just one that opens.