Repair Corrupt MP4 and MOV Files – Fix Broken Video Files

Approved By Anuraag Singh

Published On December 8th, 2017

Reading Time 4 Minutes Reading

Category Multimedia

Repair Corrupt MP4 and MOV Files

We are quite familiar with the video application tool, the VLC player, which happens to be a free video player that is used to watching movies. However, one this that most of us might not be that much familiar with are the capability of this particular application and its features that are being offered for dealing with corrupted/damaged video/media files. This might take one by complete surprise, but it is true that one can actually try repairing corrupted or damaged MP4 & MOV files with the help of VLC Player. VLC player’s transcode ability allows you to convert the corrupt/damaged MOV & MP4 videos files into playable ones.

Repair Damaged MP4 and MOV Files

Many times, a user encounters such an error that when the user attempts for accessing his media files in the VLC player, the video application shows that those files are somehow broken, and thus, the VLC player is unable to read them. It may also be prompted to the user for asking for permissions to repair damaged MP4 movies files. The plight lies in the fact that most of the users of this application are totally unaware about the inbuilt repair capability of this VLC player, and tend to select ‘No’ mostly. So, next time when you see a similar sort of issue, and the VLC application is asking you repair your MP4 and MOV files, then remember to click ‘Yes’ instead of ‘NO’.

Causes for MP4 / MOV File’s Corruption

Before moving to the manual processes of repairing the files, let us take a glimpse of the causes that lead to MP4 and MOV files to become corrupt or damaged or inaccessible:

Many times, the damage or corruption in the MOV or MP4 video files occurs due to the result of some broken header
Suddenly losing internet connectivity while any of the video files is still in the download mode can also be a reason causing the damage to the video files
Suddenly losing power supply when any of the media files is still playing in your VLC player or any other application can also lead to the damage
Inappropriately executing incomplete read/write operations might as well lead to the eruption of such problem causing the error message to pop up
Damage in the MP4/MOV video files can occur because of compression issue as well.
The video files that have been downloaded through some unreliable internet sources might not work or even play in the VLC player in the first place.

Manual Methods to Repair Corrupt MP4 and MOV Files

First Manual Method
You can follow the below-mentioned steps for fix broken video files (MOV and MP4) using VLC.

The very first step goes on to launch the VLC Player itself
Then, go to Media
After that, select Convert or Save
And then, the next step involves adding of the input files or the streams that are needed to be transcoded
Press Convert or Save again
Then, in this Convert window, which appears henceforth, give desired file name for your destination file
And next to that is the selection of the desired Code from the appeared profile list
Press the button – “Edit Selected Profile” for checking or editing any specified profile settings
You can even choose to add a fresh new profile or can even select deleting of any the existing profiles as well
After that, press Start

Second Manual Method

Apart from the method given above, this is yet another manual way to repair corrupt MP4 and MOV files. You just have to follow the simple steps given below:

First of all, to begin with, you have to form a copy of your original video file (MP4/ MOV)
And then, rename that particular file to AVI
And after that, launch your VLC application
Select VLC
Select Preferences
Click Input or Codecs
And after that in the bottom segment of your Preferences window, you have to click on Save
And then, you can select Always Fix that is next to Repair AVI Files or fix broken video files

Service

If no manual method helps in repairing your corrupted video file help then try contacting a repair agency, which can offer you expert data recovery services to repair corrupt MP4 and MOV Files error.