Repair corrupted video files — in your browser, never uploaded

MP4, MOV, camera and screen recordings. Drop the file, or jump straight to the page for your exact error below.

Your file never leaves your device — repair runs in your browser. 0 bytes uploaded.

Your data is the big block — usually intact. What breaks is the small index. Repair rebuilds it.

Drop a file here or browseTap to choose a file

ZIP · Office · PDF · video · JPG · PNG · RAR/7z · SQLite — repaired right here in your browser. Nothing is uploaded

0 bytes uploadedFree: 3 repairs/day — up to 500 MB video, 100 MB docs & archives, 50 MB photos. Free download. Single repair €5.90. No account required.

Short answer

This tool repairs corrupted MP4 and MOV video — camera and screen recordings that won't open or won't play because their structure (the index, the moov atom, a truncated or unfinalized container) is broken. It runs entirely in your browser: the file never leaves your device and 0 bytes are uploaded, which you can confirm yourself in the Network tab. The honest limit: it rebuilds structure around footage that's still in the file, but it can't regenerate frames that were never written to disk or were later overwritten.

How video corruption actually works

A video file is two things: an index that tells the player where every frame lives, and the stream data — the compressed frames themselves. Corruption almost always hits one or the other, and the difference decides everything. Index damage (a recording that was never finalized, a truncated transfer) leaves the footage physically intact in the file; the index can be rebuilt by scanning that data, and the video comes back. Stream damage (overwritten bytes, bad sectors) is different: structure can be rebuilt around the gap, but the missing frames are gone — no tool can regenerate footage that isn't in the file. That one distinction is why some "hopeless" files repair perfectly and some pristine-looking files don't.

Pick your exact problem

One generic wall of text can't fix eight different failures. Each page below covers one, with the verbatim error text, the mechanism behind it, and an honest read on repairability.

Why no-upload matters for video

Video is where the upload model breaks down. Files are huge (a five-minute 4K clip can pass 2 GB), so upload-first tools make you wait through a long transfer before they can even tell you whether the file is fixable, and multi-gigabyte uploads fail on ordinary connections. Footage is also often private: client work, family moments, material under NDA. In-browser repair sidesteps both problems: diagnosis starts in seconds because the file never travels, and privacy isn't a policy, it's a mechanism you can verify yourself in the Network tab.

What this can and can't fix

The general rule: repair rebuilds structure around surviving data. If the frames are in the file, a broken index, truncated container, or damaged header can be worked around, and the result is your real footage. If the frames were never written to disk (the seconds still in a camera's RAM when the battery died) or were later overwritten, they cannot be regenerated by any software, ours included. Files that read as 0 bytes are a recovery problem (getting bytes back from the storage device), not a repair problem; do recovery first, then repair what it returns. And if a repair fails, you're never charged for it.

FAQ

How can I repair a corrupted video file for free?

Drop it into the tool above. The free tier handles files up to 500 MB, 3 repairs per day, with a free download and no account. The repair runs locally in your browser, so nothing is uploaded. If your file is larger (common for 4K or long recordings), a single repair is €5.90 with no size cap.

Can corrupted videos be repaired?

Very often, yes — because most corruption breaks the file's structure (the index and container), not the compressed footage itself. Structure can be rebuilt around surviving data. What can't be repaired is data that was never written or was overwritten: those frames don't exist in the file anymore.

How do I fix a video that won't play?

First identify the failure: if the file plays in VLC but not elsewhere, it's likely a codec problem, not corruption. If it fails everywhere, the structure is probably damaged, which is what repair addresses. The pages linked above walk through each specific error and source.

What is the best free video repair tool?

It depends on the damage. For unfinalized MP4s, untrunc is a respected free option but requires compiling and a healthy reference file; for DJI footage, djifix is free but command-line only. IntactFile's free tier does structural repair in the browser with no install and no upload — files up to 500 MB, 3 per day. For truly free fixes we say so on each page: re-download the file, try VLC as a test player, use a camera's built-in repair first.

Why do recovered videos not play?

Data recovery finds bytes; it doesn't guarantee they form a working file. Recovered videos are frequently fragmented, partially overwritten, or carved with the wrong length, so the structure is broken even when most footage survived. Repair is the second half of that job: rebuilding a playable file around the data recovery brought back.

Related: MP4 won't open or won't play ·don't want your footage uploaded — the proof page · pricing