Repair a Corrupted MOV File

MOV is Apple's QuickTime container. iPhones record into it by default, macOS screen recordings use it, and external ProRes recorders such as Atomos write it as well. Structurally it is the ancestor of MP4, built from the same atoms, and it fails the same way. The frames survive; the index does not.

Where broken MOVs come from

The index (the moov atom) is written only when a recording stops cleanly. Everything on this list prevents that from happening:

On an iPhone: the camera app crashes mid-take, the phone dies, or storage runs out while recording. Also very common: an AirDrop, iCloud sync or USB copy gets cut off, and the computer ends up with a partial file while the phone still holds the intact original.
On a camera: battery pulled or drained mid-clip, card ejected too early, or a card too slow for the bitrate that gives up mid-write.
On a Mac: a screen recording interrupted by a crash or forced shutdown never gets finalised.

In each case the result looks the same. A .mov with a plausible size that QuickTime refuses with "The document could not be opened", that Photos won't import, and that editors won't ingest.

Free things to try before paying anyone

Check whether the original still exists. This solves more cases than any repair tool. If the file came off an iPhone, look in Photos on the phone and in iCloud; a botched transfer leaves the source untouched. Re-copy over a cable if AirDrop keeps failing.
Try VLC. It ignores much of the structure QuickTime insists on. If VLC plays your MOV, the file is healthy and your real problem is codec support in the pickier app. This is common with HEVC on older machines; see cannot decode H.265 on Mac.
Try another machine. Same logic. A file that plays anywhere is not corrupt.
For a recording that was cut off mid-take, the open-source tool untrunc is worth knowing. Feed it the broken file plus an ordinary healthy clip from the same device in the same recording mode, and it grafts the good file's structure onto the bad one. The donor clip is not optional; the whole method depends on it.

If none of that helps, you have a genuine recovery case.

How our engine repairs MOV files

The engine does not patch the broken index. It rebuilds one from scratch. It scans the media payload for frames, identifies the codec from the frame data itself (H.264, HEVC and ProRes are all common in MOV), reads the codec parameters out of the stream, and writes a new container around your original data.

Audio comes back too. Phone MOVs usually carry AAC. Camera and recorder MOVs usually carry PCM, which is harder, because raw PCM has no markers to search for; the engine derives its layout from the surrounding structure instead.

No reference clip is needed, and nothing is re-encoded. The recovered file carries your original frames, bit for bit.

What you do

Upload the MOV. Up to 50 GB.
A free 5-second preview arrives about a minute later, picture and sound.
Pay from $5 if the preview shows your clip. If recovery fails, it costs nothing.

FAQ

My iPhone video plays on the phone but the copy on my computer won't open. Why? The transfer was interrupted. Delete the copy and transfer again, ideally over a cable. The original on the phone is fine, so there is nothing to repair.

QuickTime says "The document could not be opened." What now? That is QuickTime's generic answer to a file whose index it cannot read. VLC may still play it; if VLC fails too, it is a real corruption case. More on that message at the document could not be opened.

Does this handle ProRes MOV from an Atomos recorder or an iPhone Pro? Yes. ProRes is one of the engine's core codecs, including the 10-bit flavours external recorders write, along with the PCM audio that usually rides with it.

Is MOV the same as MP4? Nearly. MP4 was standardised from Apple's QuickTime format, and the two share the same atom structure, which is why one recovery approach covers both. The failure patterns are identical.

Do you need a reference video from my camera? No. Parameters are read from the broken file itself. That is what separates this from untrunc-style repair.

Is my footage private? Server in France, HTTPS upload, auto-deleted after 48 hours, never shared or used to train anything.

Upload your MOV →

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