Answers to what people actually ask before dropping a file in.
Almost always, yes. Cameras write video in fixed cycles as they record — metadata, a frame, audio, repeated thousands of times. If recording stops cleanly, one last pass writes an index telling players where every frame is. If the battery dies or the card gets pulled mid-take, that index never gets written — but the cycles the camera already wrote are still on the card, byte for byte. The file just has no map to read them back. The free preview exists so you can check this yourself before paying anything: if it plays, the footage was there.
Sony XAVC-S and XAVC-HS — the .RSV and unfinalized
.MP4 files left behind by the FX3, FX30, FX6, FX9, a6700, a7 series,
and the BRC-AM7, among others. Also Panasonic .mdt (LUMIX GH5S and
similar) and DJI Osmo Action, with preview support. If your camera or file doesn't
match, drop it in anyway — the preview is free to try, and if the layout isn't
recognized yet, that's useful for me to know too.
Nothing does. It runs entirely in your browser using the File System Access API — bytes are read directly from your source file and the rebuilt file is written straight to your drive. There's no step where the video data crosses the network. You can check this yourself: open your browser's network tab while it runs and watch nothing large go out. The only things that ever leave your browser are a hash of the first 64KB of the file (to bind a paid license to that one file) and anonymous stats like codec and success/failure — never the footage, never a filename. Full detail on the privacy page. During early access there's one more: the email address you enter before a recovery starts, so I can tell you before pricing begins and follow up about your recovery.
Then don't pay — that's exactly what the free preview is for. Sometimes a file needs a donor clip (a normal, working recording from the same camera and settings) to supply codec parameters the broken file lost; the tool tells you when that's the case. If the layout isn't recognized at all, that's a format the engine doesn't handle yet, and no charge happens either way.
Right now it's free, whatever the file size — footage.repair is in early access. After that, per-file pricing will apply (a flat one-time fee by file size, no subscription). The change will be announced on the site well in advance, and anything recovered during early access stays free. Starting a recovery asks for your email address — that's how the notice reaches you.
Email me and it gets refunded. The preview is supposed to catch this before you pay, but if something slips through, you're not charged for a file that doesn't work.
You can, and for some files it works fine. The gap is mostly in the specifics: Sony's XAVC-S/HS containers scatter codec parameter sets through the metadata track in ways generic MP4-repair tools don't expect, camera firmware sometimes rotates parameter set IDs mid-recording, and getting frame display order right for H.265 means reading POC values out of slice headers rather than guessing from frame type. footage.repair is built specifically around these cameras' actual byte layout rather than a general-purpose repair heuristic.
Both Mac and Windows, in Chrome or Edge — the recovery relies on the File System Access API, which Safari and Firefox don't support yet, and mobile browsers generally don't either. If your browser can't run it, the page tells you rather than failing silently.
No. Independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by any camera manufacturer.
Something not covered here — brian@footage.repair, or just drop the file and see what happens.