Learn How to Repair Corrupt Video Files Easily Using FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a free multimedia tool with repairing capabilities, but you’ll need to be well-versed in commands. Additionally, there are other options available for repairing videos.

Read this article to explore more details about the tools.

Ffmpeg is a free tool that is used for handling audio, video and other multimedia files. It is a command line tool that can be used with Windows, Mac, and UNIX platforms. Here are some interesting facts about the Ffmpeg software.

  • Ffmpeg is free to use
  • It can be used for audio and video streaming, recording, conversion, mux, demux, decode, encoding, transcode and filter multimedia files
  • Supports pretty much all types of files from ancient to the most cutting-edge format
  • It is extremely portable; meaning it can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, BDS’s, Solaris etc. in a wide variety of architectures and builds

In addition to all these features, this interesting software Ffmpeg can also be used to repair corruption in video files. Video files like MP4 and MOV can get corrupted in a variety of ways like playing the file on an incompatible player or repeatedly converting from one file format to another.

Video files can also get corrupted when it’s being transferred from one device to another and the transfer is interrupted.

Repair corrupt video files using Ffmpeg

To repair these corruption issues, Ffmpeg is a great choice. Ffmeg software first allows you to check the file for corruption. To do that, follow the commands below.

  1. Click on Windows + X keys and select Command Prompt
  2. In the Command prompt, type the following command

‘ffmpeg –v error –i corrupted_input.ts –f null -&> corruptions.log’

This command will check for corruption in the corrupted-input.ts stream file and save the errors in the log file.

  1. Then, go ahead and fix the corrupted file using the following command

‘ffmpeg –i corrupted_input.ts –map –ignore_unknown/-copy_unknown –c copy fixed.ts’

This command will fix corruption in the corrupted_input.ts stream file and save the repaired file in the output file ‘fixed.ts’.

Now that we’ve seen how to fix corrupt video files using Ffmpeg, it is important to understand that you should be familiar with the command line tools before using this tool. Also, the success of repair depends on a variety of factors like severity and type of corruption.

Other Alternatives to Repair Corrupt Video Files

Repair Corrupt files using Yodot MOV Repair

If you are not comfortable with command line tools or if Ffmpeg cannot repair your MP4 or MOV file, you can make use of professional video repair tools like Yodot Video repair. It is an easy repair application that can be used to repair MP4 and MOV files. All types of issues like file header and structure damage or virus-infected files can be repaired by this software.

The best part about using this software is that it uses a read-only mechanism to repair your files, so there is no chance for the original file to get damaged or altered. So, go ahead, download this software, and give it a try.

The software is designed to be compatible with videos created on various makes of cameras, Go Pro devices and phones. Both Mac and Windows versions are available, so you can use this tool irrespective of which OS you’re using.

Conclusion

By using FFmpeg you can repair minor corrupt videos but you will have to be familiar with the commands, and in case of severely corrupt or damaged video you can use a dedicated video repair tool to get different videos fixed without having to do any wizardry using commands.