Recover deleted videos from a camera card on a Mac.
Videos are the hard case. They are big, they get split around other files, and a half-recovered video is worth nothing. Here is how Retriever handles them, honestly.
Why videos are harder than photos
A photo is a few megabytes and usually sits in one piece. A video is gigabytes, and the camera writes it while other files come and go. On a card that has been used for a while, a video is often stored in several pieces around other files. Bring back the pieces in the wrong order and the file will not play.
What Retriever does with the pieces
A video that was recorded around other files on the card is put back together and checked against its own index, even from many pieces. If a piece lies out of order or was overwritten, the video stays honestly marked "fragmented". In our tests, on FAT32 cards 8 of 8 fragmented videos came back byte-identical, on exFAT 6 of 8, and no file was wrongly called intact.
Formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, AVCHD with MTS and M2TS, M2T. Videos play in the preview before you pay, so you know what you get.
First: stop using the card
Deleting a photo removes its name from the card's directory. The bytes stay until the space is reused. Every new photo, every video, every "format" in the camera menu can overwrite them. So: no new pictures, no formatting, no repair tools. Take the card out and leave it alone until you scan it.
Get them back with Retriever, step by step
- Download Retriever on your Mac. It runs on macOS 13 or newer, Apple Silicon and Intel. Scanning and looking are free.
- Put the card in a reader and choose it in the app. Retriever asks once for your Mac password, through the normal macOS dialog. It reads the card and never writes to it.
- Back up. Retriever makes a bit-for-bit copy of the card and works on the copy. You need free space the size of the card, on the Mac or an external drive.
- Scan. The app reads every byte. "Sniffing through 64 GB…", then "Found 1,204 photos so far".
- Look. Thumbnails by day, the folders of the card, full-size previews. Every file carries an honest badge: intact, probably damaged, fragmented, unverified, duplicate. All of this is free.
- Recover. This is the paid step, 29 USD once. Pick a folder on your Mac, never the card itself. Every written file is verified.
Scan and look for free
Download Retriever, choose the card, back up, scan, look. You pay only if you save files you have already seen, 29 USD once.