Can you save a feature film from ruins?

[ivannoel]

Hi guys,

Too wrecked to write much, so here goes:
5D mkiii feature film shot in magic RAW files.
All fine, beautiful images. We wallow in our own self-congratulation.
We move an external hard disc (usually connected to mac) to a PC for backup.
In the transfer, something happens, we lose all files.
3 days shoot with about 30 actors, small budget shoot, cannot re-shoot. Film gone.

So I try all sorts of recovery softwares, and found, in a folder called 'found', many 'CHK' extension files, which have the size and date suggesting they could be the lost RAW files.

I have tried CHK recognition softwares, but none seem to help me open them.
Just changing the extension to RAW does help either.

Can anyone suggest anything? A way of having these files (almost certainly RAW) opened?
A way to salvage maybe their contents?

You have no idea of the angst here in our team... :-(

Many thanks guys.

[a1ex]

If you know the resolution at which the movie was shot, you can fake the metadata (footer) from a movie with the same resolution.

Some info here:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5732.0
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8237.0