Hello everyone! I don't know, if this is a necro-posting, but I'll write.
Here is my sitiation: Canon 5D Mark III, 1.2.3, last build of Magic Lantern.
If you format CF card with loaded ML, you'll get FAT32 filesystem (I use 128gb Sandisk pro). Without ML you'll get exFAT. It doesn't matter, video automatically splits into 4gb chunks, m00, m01 etc. But! What has happend with my friend: he formatted card with ML loaded, shot one day, card was full. And then he pulled out SD with ML, and then he accidentally formatted CF, with ExFAT! Facepalm!..
FAT32 was formatted with exFAT. What I tried: R.saver (only saw ML-firmware files), photorec (photorec saved some MLV files 3.5mb length, all info was right, ie WB, shutter, but no video) and many other programs. It was pointless.
And I decided to dig deeper into card, with hex-editor. A opened document with byte-by-byte description of all MLV-segments, and journey begans!
After two days I found out one important thing: ML (or 5D himself), when in 4gb-chunks mode, continuously overwrites first VIDF-segment with headers for chunk-files (m00, m01...). What we have in perfect world:
MLVI...|some stuff, like WB, shutter, pixel shift...|VIDF-0..|videoframe0|VIDF1|videoframe1|... etc
What we have in FAT32:
MLVI...|some stuff, like WB, shutter, pixel shift...|VIDF-0..|videoframe0 - cut! after around 1024 bytes of videoframe0 we can see this:
MLVI...|some stuff, like WB, shutter, pixel shift...|MLVI name for chunk, ie MVIxx_yyy.M00|VIDF-1892|videoframe1892 - cut!
And etc, with all Mxx chunks. So, we have completely destroyed first frame. And if we look closely down the card, we'll find our cutted frames, but without headers.
And then I copy-pasted headers from the first VIDF to their right places, checked length (if we have one byte mismatch, all converters stops with errors), replaced first VIDF-frame with healthy frame from another video and saved all this files from hex-editor to PC. And it worked!
It was insane! I saw dreams, where I, in space, trying to rebuild MLV from numbers in stars.
What I want to say... And nothing to say! FAT32 sucks, photorec sucks, and I'm Neo, I can see RAW-video in hex-numbers!
P.S. Maybe this post will be useful for lost souls, who's trying to save their MLV-files from FAT32-trap:)) Load your hex-editors, friends!
Here is my sitiation: Canon 5D Mark III, 1.2.3, last build of Magic Lantern.
If you format CF card with loaded ML, you'll get FAT32 filesystem (I use 128gb Sandisk pro). Without ML you'll get exFAT. It doesn't matter, video automatically splits into 4gb chunks, m00, m01 etc. But! What has happend with my friend: he formatted card with ML loaded, shot one day, card was full. And then he pulled out SD with ML, and then he accidentally formatted CF, with ExFAT! Facepalm!..
FAT32 was formatted with exFAT. What I tried: R.saver (only saw ML-firmware files), photorec (photorec saved some MLV files 3.5mb length, all info was right, ie WB, shutter, but no video) and many other programs. It was pointless.
And I decided to dig deeper into card, with hex-editor. A opened document with byte-by-byte description of all MLV-segments, and journey begans!
After two days I found out one important thing: ML (or 5D himself), when in 4gb-chunks mode, continuously overwrites first VIDF-segment with headers for chunk-files (m00, m01...). What we have in perfect world:
MLVI...|some stuff, like WB, shutter, pixel shift...|VIDF-0..|videoframe0|VIDF1|videoframe1|... etc
What we have in FAT32:
MLVI...|some stuff, like WB, shutter, pixel shift...|VIDF-0..|videoframe0 - cut! after around 1024 bytes of videoframe0 we can see this:
MLVI...|some stuff, like WB, shutter, pixel shift...|MLVI name for chunk, ie MVIxx_yyy.M00|VIDF-1892|videoframe1892 - cut!
And etc, with all Mxx chunks. So, we have completely destroyed first frame. And if we look closely down the card, we'll find our cutted frames, but without headers.
And then I copy-pasted headers from the first VIDF to their right places, checked length (if we have one byte mismatch, all converters stops with errors), replaced first VIDF-frame with healthy frame from another video and saved all this files from hex-editor to PC. And it worked!
It was insane! I saw dreams, where I, in space, trying to rebuild MLV from numbers in stars.
What I want to say... And nothing to say! FAT32 sucks, photorec sucks, and I'm Neo, I can see RAW-video in hex-numbers!
P.S. Maybe this post will be useful for lost souls, who's trying to save their MLV-files from FAT32-trap:)) Load your hex-editors, friends!