Video file is unplayable after crash in water

[jsosborn]

I clipped a bridge, and the Spark went underwater for an hour. It's still drying, but I pulled the chip and all stills and video work except the final one which was a video recording when it hit.

Can I repair and play the damaged MP-4?

 

[Spark 317]

It's been suggested to put the card back in the Spark and record a few seconds of video and the corrupted file may repair itself.

But your Spark is drying out and may not work for you now.

I'm not sure if you can put the card in something else (phone) and record something that it will repair the file?

Might be a conflict with the DJI coding if the card is in something else?

Here are some other search results about corrupted files to ponder.

Good luck. ?

 

[jsosborn]

Thanks! That worked. I lost the last few seconds of the actual crash, but the rest of the footage was fine. Also, after an hour in fresh water, my Spark recovered fully after taking off the body and drying it with a microfiber cloth, then 5 days in rice in a ziplock under a grow light. Just missing a cover for the forward collision detector. Still looking for a replacement.

 

[Tentoes]

Thanks! That worked. I lost the last few seconds of the actual crash, but the rest of the footage was fine. Also, after an hour in fresh water, my Spark recovered fully after taking off the body and drying it with a microfiber cloth, then 5 days in rice in a ziplock under a grow light. Just missing a cover for the forward collision detector. Still looking for a replacement.

Glad it's working again!

I've seen these covers on Amazon. Search for DJI Spark Parts.

 

[ToJo]

The last few seconds of the crash are missing from the video because the file system failed to mark the location of the last video chunk in its table (due to unexpected power loss). The same issue often happens with dash cams. It's a common case when you can see all the video tracks recorded prior to the crash, but the last few seconds of the actual crash are missing. You can read more about this here.

To recover the missing video, you would have to manually scan the SD card to find the lost video data. There are services that can do this for you, but you would have to pay for such kind of work, of course...