How I Repaired 4K and VR Drone Videos with this SECRET tool after my drone crashed?

No no no no no……Bamm! Then there was silence. My DJI Air 2S drone crashed after exact 7 minutes of flight time. Here’s what happened: The drone crashed into a pole, which I somehow missed.

To add to the blow, the drone decided to fall into a patch of water worsening the damage. I rushed to rescue it and found that the drone blades were badly damaged. So yeah, it won’t take off anytime soon.

I still hoped to retrieve my data from the memory chip in the drone, so I took it out and dried it with a clean cloth. Hoping to see if my videos are safe, I inserted it on my computer, luckily the SD card was working, but then the real horror struck, all the videos captured from the drone were unplayable and corrupt.

DJI drones are used for capturing professional and cinematic grade aerial footage, 4K and VR videos. However, if your drone gets crashed, or shuts down abruptly in between flight, it can hit issues of corrupted video files. If you have also faced a similar situation, this guide can help. I have penned down my experience to help you understand the reasons of video corruption in a drone, and the methods to fix it to avoid data loss.

Common Causes of Video File Corruption in Drone:

There are various factors that can lead to the corruption of video files on DJI drones.

1. Abrupt shutdowns — One major cause for drone video footage corruption is interruptions during the recording and video saving process. Abrupt shutdowns, connection failure, crashes because of human errors, SD card removal or low battery, can prevent files from being saved correctly.
2. High temperature exposure — Exposing your drone to high temperatures can damage the videos stored on the SD card.
3. Virus infection — If your SD card, drone or computer is virus-infected, then a virus or malware attack on the SD card can also corrupt files. Therefore, you need to do regular firmware updates and antivirus checks before flying.

Methods to Avoid and Fix Corrupted DJI Videos

While I was searching for multiple ways to get my videos back in playing condition. I found out some interesting techniques and tools that can help you avoid corruption of DJI drone video files.

1. Do not remove the SD card immediately in case of crash:

If you want to avoid video corruption issues, always allow the drone to finish recording and saving the video file. If you remove the card while the recording is still on, it will become corrupt. I made the same mistake when my drone camera was crashed. I hurriedly removed the SD card, so even if my drone was working in the background to save the video, the process was probably interrupted.

1. Keep your battery charged fully

My friend’s DJI drone lost power mid-flight and while he saved a crash, he also lost the recorded file to corruption. Battery drainage mid-flight happens with most of us, but you can avoid, if you keep your battery charged and take calculated flight time before battery drains.

Also, make a habit of carrying an extra battery whenever you are shooting an important video on any location. While this may not repair any video for sure, it can help avoid any such issue.

1. Repair with VLC media player

Most of the time the drone video corruption is minor and can be fixed with VLC media player. Hence, users can try using the always fix feature in VLC media player to make videos playable again. Just copy the original video file, change it to an AVI format, and change the settings in VLC to “always fix damaged files.” The repaired video can then be converted back to MP4, if required.

1. Use Professional Repair Tool

While I was struggling to find the best possible solution to fix the corrupt drone videos, I remembered a tool I had discovered a few months back. It was a video repair software that claimed to be able to fix even the most severely damaged footage. Hence, I rushed to my computer and installed the program.

The tool was Stellar Repair for Video, this software claimed to repair a wide range of video file format and issues, including VR and 4K videos. Hence, I opened the tool on my computer and select the corrupt video file, and waited a few minutes after hitting the repair button. To my surprise, the software was able to analyze and fix the problem in corrupted video files and make the file playable again. Within a few minutes, the 4K video footage taken from the drone was playing. There were no glitches and the quality and color were intact.

If you ever fall in a similar situation, I recommend this solution to fix the corrupt video file and make your videos playable again. I also made sure to keep this video repair software always with me, just in case any future drone mishaps occurs. This tool proved itself to be invaluable by preserving my hard work within no time and at such minimal cost.

Conclusion

If you ever fall in such situations where your drone gets damaged or crashes, do not remove the SD card right away. Wait for some time and try to manually switch off the drone, even if you don’t find any signs of power. However, even if after taking such precautions, your 4K drone video file remains unplayable or gets corrupt, try Stellar Repair for Video tool to effectively repair those video files.