Corrupted .RAW file but data is still there? I think

Josh Lambeth · October 01, 2013, 07:23:39 PM

Hey Everyone,
I have been using the RAW hack on the 5d3 for a while now and love it. I haven't had any issues till yesterday. During a shoot we were recording 1080p @ 24fps RAW. When I pressed the stop record button it said "Busy" on the top of the camera and the red record light was still lit. I let the camera sit for about 5minutes and when I came back it was still doing the same thing. I turned off the camera then turned it back on and received an "ERR 80" Message on the top of the camera. This didn't go away till I pulled the battery. After I pulled the battery and restarted the camera I swapped cards.

My problem is now I can't get anything off that card. When I plug the card into my computer I can see 2 files. A backup.raw and the M13-1314.RAW file. The backup.raw file is 524kb and the .RAW file is 0kb. However if I look at the used space on the card it says about 20GB has been used on the card. I just can't find that file. Any ideas on how I can salvage this? I have tried coping the files to my computers HDD but it went really quickly and after doing a footer file fix I just get blank DNGs. Currently I am making an exact backup of the entire card to an external hard drive so I can try working on the files there as if I am working on the actual card. I am hoping I get better results.

Any ideas welcome! Thanks!

Josh

Josh Lambeth · October 01, 2013, 08:08:22 PM

I tried the above using an external hard-drive copy of the card. Still the same result. I get a bunch of black DNG's with odd-color lines in the top portion. Any ideas? Thanks.

Josh

Midphase · October 01, 2013, 11:15:42 PM

Sorry but it would appear your footage is not recoverable, hopefully it wasn't anything terribly important, and if it was I would assume that you would have gotten a second take after your camera froze for 5 minutes.

Your best bet would be to re-format the card and run a series of tests to make sure the problem doesn't happen again. If it does, contact the manufacturer and ask if you can get a replacement.

Josh Lambeth · October 03, 2013, 09:31:08 PM

I don't like that answer... haha! Unfortunately it was somewhat of an important shot, and we can't shoot again. I have been testing both RAW on the camera and these memory cards for the last 2 weeks straight without any issues at all. Because of this we decided to shoot RAW on this project since all the other cameras being used were REDs (Scarlet and EPICs). We do aerial video production and decided to use our MKIII with RAW instead of flying the RED EPIC.

I am running a recovery program on this memory card and it's finding a bunch of .ASF files. Could any of these be part of the missing footage? The thing thats confusing me is the card says there is about 20GB of data on the card but I can't see it.

Anyone else have anything I could try?

Thanks for the help.

Josh

RenatoPhoto · October 03, 2013, 09:41:08 PM

Quote from: Josh Lambeth on October 03, 2013, 09:31:08 PM
Anyone else have anything I could try?

Have a look at these threads under Post-processing Workflow:

Salvaging Pink Crazy DNGs
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=8237.0

How to replace file footer, aka fix the Error: This ain't a lv_rec RAW file
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5732.0

Josh Lambeth · October 03, 2013, 10:25:55 PM

Thank you. I will try the first option. I tried the footer fix and that didn't seem to work.

Josh Lambeth · October 04, 2013, 11:46:36 AM

Ok, I am getting somewhere.

I ran a card recovery program on the CF Card. It found a bunch of .ASF files. The files range in size from as little as 20mb to as much as 1.4GB. I took the first .ASF file and changed the extension to .RAW and tried running it through RAW2DNG. This didn't work and I got a "This Ain't A Valid..." I then took a 4GB footer file from the above link on how to fix footers. After I added this and dropped the newly saved .RAW into RAW2DNG it ran! I stopped it after a few seconds since I didn't want to let it go completely if it wasn't going to work. I then imported the DNG's into Adobe LightRoom and low and behold PARTS of my footage is there. I say parts because it's in an odd order... Here is a quick screen shot.

I am going to backup these ASF files so I have the originals then I am going to attempt the Salvage crazy DNG's link above and see what happens.

Do you think this is still possible to save?!?!? I hope so!!!

Josh Lambeth · October 04, 2013, 02:16:52 PM

So after going through the files here's what I can see.

I do infact have the entire clip. It's just broken up into 215 different ASF files. I am able to combine the files into 1 .RAW file and get DNG's out of it. My problem is the alignment of the frames. For each ASF file the alignment changes. The last file, 215.ASF is the closest it comes to being correct framing. 95% of the frame is there with just a little bit of pink in the bottom of the frame.

If I merge multiple files together the arrangement jumps as it gets to each new file in the hex code.

Is this fixable or am I really just screwed? I saw in the thread about fixing the Odd Pink DNGs 1% saying something about the alignment looked off but I can't find anything about fixing that... I followed the steps listed in that thread but it didn't seem to fix the alignment issue.

Thanks guys!

Josh

g3gg0 · October 04, 2013, 07:58:17 PM

Quote from: Josh Lambeth on October 04, 2013, 02:16:52 PM
So after going through the files here's what I can see.

I do infact have the entire clip. It's just broken up into 215 different ASF files. I am able to combine the files into 1 .RAW file and get DNG's out of it. My problem is the alignment of the frames. For each ASF file the alignment changes.

i guess you need the file order to combine it correctly.
it should be n*log(n) and thus 500 combinations

as you can check the order by watching the content, it may be easier.

Josh Lambeth · October 04, 2013, 08:09:23 PM

From what I can see the files are already in the correct order. Can you elaborate a bit more on the n*log(n) thing? Thanks.

Josh

Josh Lambeth · October 05, 2013, 01:26:34 AM

Here is a video of all the ASF files together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1IXbcdEows&feature=youtu.be

Josh

Josh Lambeth · October 05, 2013, 02:11:37 AM

Here's my current workflow:

Change File0001.ASF to File0001.RAW
Opening the file in 0xED and add the footer information from known working file. Save the file.
Run the updated RAW file through Raw2DNG.
Import DNG's into Lightroom.

Here is where things are odd. In every instance I get the file to show some type of information. Some I get almost all of it. But then the next file is messed up again.

Here are 4 images from 4 files. As you can see File0002.RAW is almost completely intact.

File0001.RAW

File0002.RAW

File0003.RAW

File0004.RAW

I would pay anyone to download the files and see what you can figure out. I have an FTP server that has unlimited space so I could upload it all to you.

Thanks again for working with me on this.

Josh

News:

Corrupted .RAW file but data is still there? I think