After a few flights the other day I went to transfer the 1080p video files off the microSD card from the air unit only to discover that 2 of the 4 files on the card were corrupted.  What's going on and how do I prevent this from happening?

David

Hello and good day David. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for reaching out. May we know what is the model of the SD Card that you are using please. In addition, are you able to use a different suggested SD card or try to format the said SD card to see if the issue will still persist? Please keep us posted for further assistance. Thank you.

DJI Stephen Posted at 2-14 08:35
Hello and good day David. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for reaching out. May we know what is the model of the SD Card that you are using please. In addition, are you able to use a different suggested SD card or try to format the said SD card to see if the issue will still persist? Please keep us posted for further assistance. Thank you.

Hi Stephen, thanks for the reply.  I am using the SanDisk 128 GB Extreme Plus, found here: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-extreme-plus-128gb-microsdxc-uhs-i-memory-card/6282919.p?skuId=6282919
It was originally formatted on the AU.  I have since reformatted again on the AU but have not yet tested (again).  Both the AU and SD card are basically new (have about 20 testing flights on it).

In case of crash the footage use to be corrupt.

are you able to watch any of it or does it not play at all?

Hi David,

Did you power off your drone prior to stopping the video recording?

It looks like your files have damaged headers, which may be a result of unfinalized recording.

You may check this the following way:

1. Take the SD card out of the drone, then put it back and power the drone on. If the drone will find damaged files on the SD card, it will fix them (at least, will try to).

2. If this won't help, you can try to use a video repair tool - Recover_MP4. It's free, but works on Windows only and doesn't have a GUI (you can run it via the Command Prompt). Here is a guide on how to use it (scroll down to option 2): https://restore.media/blog/how-to-fix-corrupted-mp4-files

3. If you're on Mac, you can upload one of the files to GDrive and share the link with me, so I can try to fix it myself (if you're Ok sharing the video with a stranger, of course %)

Hi, There may be the possibilities SD card had an virus, No worries. This post shares various methods how you can repair corrupt videos shot with DJI Phantom drone.
Source: https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/repair-broken-video-mp4-dji-phantom-drone/

Kreeze Posted at 2-14 13:28
are you able to watch any of it or does it not play at all?

Hey there, it was odd... two of the four files were affected.  At first, they would not play at all.  Then I plugged the quad in for about a minute just on the bench after putting the sd card back in.  Going back to look at the files, one was able to then play only about a minute of the video (got cut short) and the other still unplayable.

Bol2riz Posted at 2-14 10:23
In case of crash the footage use to be corrupt.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but this wasn't a crash, just normal flight, landed normally.

TomVi Posted at 2-15 10:45
Hi David,

Did you power off your drone prior to stopping the video recording?

No, I had landed, then disarmed which stops the recording, then unplugged (drone first).  I'm using a separate receiver, not the dji controller.  After disarming, drone unplugged, then unplugged the dji goggles, and then the transmitter (crossfire).  

I did try your suggestion #1, results as stated to my other reply (one file partially repaired but cut short), second file completely unreadable still.  These flights were being used to help tune, but other than that not particularly important.  I don't mind sharing the files, but my main concern is just preventing this from happening in the future.  To my knowledge I didn't do anything strange to cause this to happen?

Just posting an update here.  I'll be testing again before long, but had seen in some YouTube channels recommending the use of capacitors especially when the build includes digital video feed (aka dji air unit).  So even though my rig is 4S, I added a capacitor to the main esc battery lead.  I think most folks would say this isn't strictly necessary on a 4S build but with the air unit could be (to prevent voltage spikes)?

Also saw recommendation to add another (smaller capacitor) to the reg coming off the flight controller (powering the air unit).  I have not done this mainly because i don't have another one and I don't know what size to use or exactly where to place it, but will figure this out if next tests fail.

To sum what I have changed since the corrupt files flight:
1. reformatted the microSD card through the air unit (again, even though I had done this when I first installed the AU)
2. added capacitor to the main lead going into the (4 in 1) ESC

I have yet to test these changes, but will post results once I do.

I have this issue as well, I'm flying 4S and I do have capacitor... I don't believe missing cap is the cause, because in case of voltage spike, the air unit would simply reboot and you would definitely notice in-flight.

I was blaming the microSD card as it is 64GB Kingston (not UHS-I and not Extreme one), but since I saw this post I'm now not confident anymore that changing microSD will help - we'll see.

Hacky4 Posted at 2-17 08:45
I have this issue as well, I'm flying 4S and I do have capacitor... I don't believe missing cap is the cause, because in case of voltage spike, the air unit would simply reboot and you would definitely notice in-flight.

I was blaming the microSD card as it is 64GB Kingston (not UHS-I and not Extreme one), but since I saw this post I'm now not confident anymore that changing microSD will help - we'll see.

Thanks for the note, if I do still have the issue I'll try a different SD card since I do have an extra, I just didn't want to believe that was it since I'm running the recommended type and it's basically brand new.  Will let you know.

Ok, so I've gone another 5 packs or so with no more corrupt files.  Here's what I think happened... at some point a while back I *think* I had accidentally deleted files from the SD card WITHOUT emptying my recycle bin on Mac.  For Macs, when deleting files from external storage, you need to empty the recycle bin before ejecting to *actually* delete from the storage device.  After this happened, for a while I would get this error every time I went to empty the recycle bin after deleting from the SD card, and I would just ignore it because the files seemed to be gone and nothing showed up on the SD card.  However, what may have been happening is the files were all still there, just not visible and perhaps the card was getting full.  Long story short, I reformatted again through the AU and since then no error when deleting and emptying recycle bin, and no more corrupt files!

vtexpress Posted at 2-27 06:17
Ok, so I've gone another 5 packs or so with no more corrupt files.  Here's what I think happened... at some point a while back I *think* I had accidentally deleted files from the SD card WITHOUT emptying my recycle bin on Mac.  For Macs, when deleting files from external storage, you need to empty the recycle bin before ejecting to *actually* delete from the storage device.  After this happened, for a while I would get this error every time I went to empty the recycle bin after deleting from the SD card, and I would just ignore it because the files seemed to be gone and nothing showed up on the SD card.  However, what may have been happening is the files were all still there, just not visible and perhaps the card was getting full.  Long story short, I reformatted again through the AU and since then no error when deleting and emptying recycle bin, and no more corrupt files!

Thank you for the additional information. I am happy to know that your previous trouble was resolved. If you have further concern or inquiry, please feel free to post it here at DJI Forum. We are here to help. Thank you.

Hello, it seems that your files are corrupted, you can try to format your SD card to solve this issue. But before this step, you should use a third-party tool to keep your data safe, I recommend Bitwar Data Recovery, this tool is free and effective, you can just have a try. Hope it can do something for you.

vtexpress Posted at 2-27 06:17
Ok, so I've gone another 5 packs or so with no more corrupt files.  Here's what I think happened... at some point a while back I *think* I had accidentally deleted files from the SD card WITHOUT emptying my recycle bin on Mac.  For Macs, when deleting files from external storage, you need to empty the recycle bin before ejecting to *actually* delete from the storage device.  After this happened, for a while I would get this error every time I went to empty the recycle bin after deleting from the SD card, and I would just ignore it because the files seemed to be gone and nothing showed up on the SD card.  However, what may have been happening is the files were all still there, just not visible and perhaps the card was getting full.  Long story short, I reformatted again through the AU and since then no error when deleting and emptying recycle bin, and no more corrupt files!

Thank you for sharing - this is very helpful!
I didn't know about the issue with external drives on Mac.

Hi!
I thing there is a serious bug in 1.00.06. Air unit randomly destroys recordings. Only the first recording on clean, formatted sd card is always fine, all others is just a lottery. Corrupted files shows 0 minutes and seconds. Tried to downgrade fw to version 5 but there is a bug that air unit just stops recording randomly (although no destroyed files there). Pattern of version 5 bug looks very similar to version 6. Looks like situations where in version 5 when recording is stopped - in version 6 is corrupted instead. Damaged files from version 6 can be recovered by Recover_MP4 but the image is seriously distorted. As mentioned before - after maaaany tries - it never happened with first file on freshly formatted sd card.
Sd cards used bor testing: Samsung EVO SDXC U3 64GB, Samsung EVO Plus SDXC U3 64GB
I've ordered SanDisk Extreme V30 U3 64GB and do some test next week.

i have the same problem, bought a new sd card. samsung 128mb evo.

some Vids, are broken, some not.. sometimes, the air unit just stops recording during a flight.

first i thought, its because i may removed the battery to fast after landing.

well, i just upgraded everything 2 days ago..

Hi! I have done same test on SanDisk Extreme V30 U3 64GB. After 28 recodings - none was corrupted, none was stopped during flight. Looks like the problem is in Samsung EVO/Plus cards. (djiuser_ZqXASQiVHV4g)

I have 6 recordings and I have a very good memories to recall the incident.  4 out of 6 are fine. I can totally remember two corrupts are when I forget to click REC to stop recording on goggles' REC button. For best practice, always stop recording before power down drone. Or allows DJI goggles auto rec/stop (so you just don't have to remember to click REC every time you fly).. this will always stop and save file automatically every time you disarm.
EDIT: This applies to DJI Air Unit. Caddx Vista doesn't have onboard DVR but you can still CORRUPT your video files in your DJI FPV Goggles if you unplug battery while recording.

After days trying, and downloading every obscurse software on the internet and trying free versions of paid softwares, I managed to partially repair a corrupt mp4 from the dji fpv for free by using djifix + ffmpeg.

Many frames are missing so the video is not smooth though.

Downloaded djifix here:http://djifix.live555.com/

Ffmpeg works on windows, Mac, and Linux. It's usually a CLI based program but you can get some Gui versions.

In my case, djifix created an output file output.h264 which was not playable. But ffmpeg could read this file and convert to mp4 with this command:

ffmpeg -i output.h264 -vf fps=60 output.mp4

Hope this helps someone.