MP4 wedding video won’t play on any device – any way to repair it?
I had this mp4 video i recorded last month from my cousin’s wedding. it played fine before but today when i tried opening it, it just says “can’t play this file” on both my laptop and phone. i even tried vlc, quicktime, nothing works. the file size looks normal so i don’t think it’s empty, but it just refuses to run. i honestly don’t care about anything else, i just really want this video back since it’s the only copy i have. has anyone here dealt with a broken or corrupted mp4 before? is there some way to fix this or am i screwed?
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@Ezra do you remember the name of the one you used? I keep finding shady sites and don’t wanna make things worse.
Ngl easiest way I found was using repair software. Most of the free ones online are junk but I had one that actually worked on my drone footage. It rebuilds the damaged parts automatically.
@Silas true. I fixed my niece’s birthday clip using that method. but it’s tricky if you don’t have another video shot from the same camera/phone.
In that case, it’s probably the header of the mp4 that’s broken. players can’t read how the video or audio is structured. There are tools out there that rebuild headers using a “sample” healthy file from same device.
Yeah sadly I tried my friend’s mac already. no luck. Feels like the file itself is busted.
Sometimes moving it to another device works… like plug into a diff pc or try on mac? I know it sounds dumb but windows media player wouldn’t play mine while it worked on my friend’s macbook.
I tried that “convert/save” thing on vlc. it just spits out another file that also won’t play lol.
Ugh yeah I had this happen with a travel vlog once. if file size looks fine then it’s prob corruption. VLC “convert/repair” tool sometimes helps but don’t expect miracles.
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I don’t remember exactly what @Ezra used but yeah I can confirm repair tools are kinda the way to go if vlc fails. I recovered my hiking videos the same way. Took like 5–10 mins.