Restore a damaged (truncated) mp4, m4v, mov, 3gp video. Provided you have a similar not broken video. And some luck. Also works the same way with audio like m4a.

You need:

• Another video file (taken from the same camera/app) which isn't broken
• Libav 12
• Basic ability to use a command line

yum install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-el7-latest.rpm
yum install untrunc

Type the folling commands to build from git :

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ponchio/untrunc
cd untrunc/libav
./configure
make
cd ..
g++ -o untrunc -I./libav file.cpp main.cpp track.cpp atom.cpp codec_*.cpp codecstats.cpp codec.cpp mp4.cpp log.cpp -L./libav/libavformat -lavformat -L./libav/libavcodec -lavcodec -L./libav/libavresample -lavresample -L./libav/libavutil -lavutil -lpthread -lz -std=c++11
sudo install -vpm 755 ./untrunc /usr/local/bin/ 
which -a untrunc

Depending on your system and Libav configure options you might need to add extra flags to the command line:

• add -lbz2 for errors like undefined reference to 'BZ2_bzDecompressInit',
• add -llzma for errors like undefined reference to 'lzma_stream_decoder',
• add -lX11 for errors like undefined reference to 'XOpenDisplay',
• add -lvdpau for errors like undefined reference to 'VDPAU...',
• add -ldl for errors like undefined reference to 'dlopen'.

On macOS add the following (tested on OSX 10.12.6):

• add -framework CoreFoundation -framework CoreVideo -framework VideoDecodeAcceleration.

Because Untrunc uses Libav internal headers and internal headers are not included in application development packages, you must build Libav from source.

Download the Libav sources from either the download page or its GitHub mirror:

wget https://libav.org/releases/libav-12.3.tar.xz
[or:  wget https://github.com/libav/libav/archive/v12.3.zip ]

Download the source code from GitHub at https://github.com/ponchio/untrunc

wget https://github.com/ponchio/untrunc/archive/master.zip

Unzip the Untrunc source code:

unzip master.zip

Unzip the Libav source code into the Untrunc source directory with either:

tar -xJf libav-12.3.tar.xz -C untrunc-master
[or:  unzip v12.3.zip -d untrunc-master ]

Go into the libav directory and build it:

cd untrunc-master

cd untrunc-master/libav-12.3/
./configure
make
cd ..

Depending on your system you may need to install additional packages if configure complains about them (eg. libz, libbz2, liblzma, libdl, libvdpau, libX11) If configure complains about nasm/yasm not found, you can either install Nasm or Yasm or tell configure not to use a stand-alone assembler with --disable-yasm.

Build the untrunc executable:

g++ -o untrunc -I./libav-12.3 file.cpp main.cpp track.cpp atom.cpp codec_*.cpp codecstats.cpp codec.cpp mp4.cpp log.cpp -L./libav-12.3/libavformat -lavformat -L./libav-12.3/libavcodec -lavcodec -L./libav-12.3/libavresample -lavresample -L./libav-12.3/libavutil -lavutil -lpthread -lz

Depending on your system and Libav configure options you might need to add extra flags to the command line:

• add -lbz2 for errors like undefined reference to 'BZ2_bzDecompressInit',
• add -llzma for errors like undefined reference to 'lzma_stream_decoder',
• add -lX11 for errors like undefined reference to 'XOpenDisplay',
• add -lvdpau for errors like undefined reference to 'VDPAU...',
• add -ldl for errors like undefined reference to 'dlopen'.

On macOS add the following (tested on OSX 10.12.6):

• add -framework CoreFoundation -framework CoreVideo -framework VideoDecodeAcceleration.

Follow the above steps for "Installing on other operating system", but use the following g++ command:

g++ -o untrunc file.cpp main.cpp track.cpp atom.cpp codec_*.cpp codecstats.cpp codec.cpp mp4.cpp log.cpp -I./libav-12.3 -L./libav-12.3/libavformat -lavformat -L./libav-12.3/libavcodec -lavcodec -L./libav-12.3/libavresample -lavresample -L./libav-12.3/libavutil -lavutil -lpthread -lz -framework CoreFoundation -framework CoreVideo -framework VideoDecodeAcceleration -lbz2 -DOSX

Jose1711 kindly provides an arch package here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/untrunc-git/

You need both the broken video and an example working video (ideally from the same camera, if not the chances to fix it are slim).

Run this command in the folder where you have unzipped and compiled Untrunc but replace the /path/to/... bits with your 2 video files:

./untrunc /path/to/working-video.m4v /path/to/broken-video.m4v

Then it should churn away and hopefully produce a playable file called broken-video_fixed.m4v.

That's it you're done!

(Thanks to Tom Sparrow for providing the guide)

You can use the included Dockerfile to build and execute the package as a container (you might need to add docker group: sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER, and you might want to add the --network=host option in case of "Temporary failure resolving")

docker build -t untrunc .

Then e.g. to fix the file /path/to/videos/broken_video use this command to mount your video-folder into the folder /files inside the docker container and call untrunc also inside the docker container:

docker run -v /path/to/videos/:/files untrunc /files/working_video /files/broken_video

If you managed to recover the video, help me to find time to keep working on this software and make other people happy. If you didn't, I need more corrupted samples to improve the program and I might solve the issue, who knows... so write me.

Donations can be made at my page, http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/~ponchio/untrunc.php, and promptly converted into beer.

Thank you.