How to Repair Corrupt DJI Video Files

Tried opening videos recorded on your DJI drone, just to see they won’t play? Don’t panic, as video corruption and unplayability is a common issue faced by numerous DJI users, and is often fixable in a few simple steps. How do we know this? Well, we tested several methods to repair DJI video files. These range from simply power cycling the DJI drone, to re-encoding the entire video. We’re confident one of these methods will help you. Let’s take a look!

Solution 1: Power Cycle Your DJI

Before moving on to other fixes, we suggest power cycling your DJI drone with the SD card in it, and see if it fixes the corrupt video.

This usually works in scenarios when the recording was interrupted because the drone lost battery, or it was powered off without stopping the recording first. Here, video corruption is typically the result of missing file information like the MOOV atom, codec headers, indexing info, and timestamp data. Power cycling allows the drone to detect, and attempt to repair the corrupt video file by writing the missing information to the video.

Here’s how to power cycle a DJI drone, regardless of the model:

1. Insert the SD card into the DJI drone.
2. Press the power button once to display the battery indicator, and then press and hold the power button to turn the drone off.
3. Repeat the previous step to power on the drone.
4. Try playing the corrupt recording to see if it’s been restored.

Solution 2: Use Online Services to Repair Corrupt DJI Video Files

Online video repair services are, by far, the most convenient way to repair corrupt DJI videos. It involves three main steps—upload the corrupt video, upload a sample healthy video, and click repair.

There are numerous video repair tools on the web, but most of them aren’t worth your time (and money). To avoid any nasty surprises, we recommend choosing a program from our list of tried and tested online (and offline) video repair tools.

For this tutorial, we picked Clever Online Video Repair. It’s fast, free, and reliable. More importantly, it supports videos up to 5 GB in size, significantly more than its competitors, which have an average file size limit of 500 MB. It supports both MP4 and MOV files encoded with H.264 or H.265 codecs—the primary video formats and codecs used in consumer DJI drones like the DJI Mavic, Mini, and Air series.

Here’s how to repair a DJI video file using Clever Online Video Repair:

1. Visit the Clever Online Video Repair website on your browser.
2. Click on Choose file, browse for the corrupt DJI video, and double-click it.
3. Select your DJI drone using the respective drop-down menus for Type, Brand, and Model. Click on Repair.
4. Click on Choose file, and this time, select a healthy video recorded on the same DJI drone with the same recording settings, and double-click it.
5. Register on the Clever Online Repair Website, then confirm the quality of the repaired video. After confirming, click on Download.

Solution 3: Use VLC Media Player to Fix DJI Videos

VLC Media Player isn’t just a beloved (and very capable) media player; it also doubles up as a video repair and encoding tool. Unlike most dedicated video repair tools, VLC doesn’t require a healthy reference file to repair a corrupt DJI video. That’s because VLC’s scope is limited to container-level damage, playback issues, and encoding glitches—it can’t restore video data that dedicated video repair tools requiring a reference file can.

There are two ways you can use VLC to repair your corrupt DJI video:

Option 1: Convert Corrupt DJI Video

Converting/encoding the corrupt DJI video to another format (from MP4 to MOV, or vice-versa), or re-encoding it to the same format often makes it playable again. This usually works when corruption is limited to the video’s metadata, container (MP4, MKV, AVI, etc.), and damaged/missing frames.

Here’s how to perform DJI video repair by converting, or re-encoding it using VLC:

1. Download and install VLC Media Player.
2. Open VLC Media Player, and go to Media > Convert/Save.
3. Click on Add. Browse for the corrupt DJI drone video, select it, and click Open.
4. Click the Convert / Save button.
5. Select the video format from the Profile drop-down menu. I advise choosing AVI, and using the Always fix feature described in the next section to repair the converted video.
6. Click Browse and choose where you’d like to save the video.
7. Click on Start to begin encoding it.

Option 2: Activate the “Always Fix” Option

The Always Fix feature, once enabled, automatically repairs corrupt AVI files when they’re opened using VLC. Ideally, you should re-encode the corrupt video to AVI as advised in the previous section. You can also try changing the corrupt DJI video’s file extension to AVI by simply renaming it, but the Always fix feature is less likely to work in this case because the file’s internal structure will still be that of an MP4 or MOV DJI file.

Here’s how to use VLC’s Always Fix feature to repair corrupt DJI video files:

1. Download and install VLC Media Player if you haven’t already.
2. Open VLC, and click on Tools > Preferences.
3. Click the Input/Codecs tab.
4. Click on the Damaged or incomplete AVI file drop-down menu, and choose the Always fix option.
5. Click on Save.
6. Play the corrupt DJI video that’s been re-encoded to AVI (recommended), or renamed to AVI (less likely to work), using VLC.

Solution 4: Use Untrunc

If nothing else works, you could try using a free, lightweight, open-source program called Untrunc GUI—to repair corrupt MP4 and MOV videos recorded on your DJI drone.

Untrunc GUI is essentially a GUI version of Untrunc—a command-line-based video repair tool. It’s especially effective at fixing videos that got corrupt because of incomplete recordings, or mishaps during file transfers.

Here’s how to repair a corrupt DJI video using Untrunc:

1. Visit the Untrunc GUI download page, expand the Assets menu, and download the relevant Untrunc ZIP file depending on whether you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.
2. Extract the ZIP file, then run the untrunc-gui.exe file from the extracted folder.
3. Click on reference file, find a healthy video recorded on the same DJI drone with the same recording settings, and double-click it.
4. Click the truncated file button, browse for the corrupt DJI video, and double-click it.
5. Click on Repair.
6. Untrunc will repair the video.

Could Your SD Card Be at Fault?

Video corruption may indicate issues—logical, or physical—with your SD card. However, a faulty SD card usually throws up other symptoms in addition to video corruption.

These include:

• Error messages on the DJI app, or the drone.
• Videos appear to save, but are missing when you attempt to view them later. In fact, all previously recorded videos may disappear altogether.
• Slow performance.
• The drone refuses to detect the SD card, and even if it does, it prompts you to format it and the card shows up as RAW.

So, how do you deal with a logically or physically damaged SD card?

An interrupted video recording will typically fail to save on your SD card. In this case, the SD card is probably okay, and all you need to do is stop using the SD card, connect it to a PC, and run a data recovery scan.

However, if the video wasn’t saved and you also notice other symptoms on your SD card, it’s likely logically or physically damaged.

Logically damaged SD cards can be fixed, but you must prioritize data recovery. First, scan the SD card using a good data recovery program—here’s a dedicated guide to DJI file recovery to get you started. After data recovery, run a CHKDSK scan if the card has a recognizable file system, i.e., it doesn’t show up as RAW. If the SD card shows up as RAW, formatting the SD card is your only bet.

In case the recovered videos are corrupt, you can use the methods above to fix them.

Avoid performing DIY data recovery and repair on a physically damaged SD card as it can worsen the situation. If the videos are valuable, go to a professional data recovery service and get them recovered for a fee.

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