Case file · Sony ZV-E1, 128 GB SD card, 4K XAVC video
A Calgary wedding, rebuilt from a reformatted card
A 128 GB SD card from a Sony ZV-E1 had been reformatted after a Calgary wedding, with the wedding footage on it.
About 80 GBof 4K wedding footage reconstructed
128 GBSD card, reformatted in the camera
Freethe tool we built is now public
What made it difficult
- Reformatting wiped the card's file system, so there was no list of clips left to recover from.
- Sony's XAVC video has to be put back together the way the camera wrote it. Ordinary recovery software can find pieces but can't rebuild playable clips.
What we did
- Imaged the card and worked only from the copy.
- Worked out how the ZV-E1 lays out its recordings on the card.
- Built a recovery tool around that layout and used it to reconstruct the clips.
- Released the tool free for anyone to use, as Sony XAVC recovery on sonyvideorecovery.com.
The result
About 80 GB of 4K wedding footage was reconstructed from the reformatted card.
Read the full case file on sonyvideorecovery.comLab notes: Sony XAVC · exFAT · reformatted in camera · camera-specific clip reconstruction
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