The VideoLAN Forums

Left my PC on all night to record some TV with VLC (vcr + vivo video card)

normally this works fine but when I checked it, VLC was on 100% cpu, hard drive was doing NOTHING and I have a 9GB MP4 file that I can't play in anything.

I guess it didn't finish writing out the file, or 'closing' it? (I can't think of a better way to describe it) as I get this exact problem if I try to play files while it's recording

(Even making a copy doesn't work) - I have to press STOP in VLC before the file is usable.

Is it possible to recover this file??? I only need the first 2 hours, the other 4 hours doesn't matter (I a guessing the file is about 5-6 hours)

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on fixing this...

VERY doubtful.

Oh well.. better luck next time I guess

I see that this subject has been discussed - but many years ago. I used VLC to record a live video session and was saving as an MP4 file. Unfortunately the computer crashed. I have 77mb of file that must have something in it but nothing will read it. Is there any way that anyone can come up with to rescue this file? Thanks for your help.

Did you try mplayer? Does tool called Mediainfo identify it?