I hope someone can confirm this, but i think if you turn off the Mini with recording running the Video File on SD-Card is corrupted afterwards.
I had this case now 2 times (normally i turn off recording during land).

Power up mini, start recording and stop it. It will close correctly last video file which was still open if you powered down mini without stop recording first. The last file will become available again.

Debugger Posted at 1-12 23:03
Power up mini, start recording and stop it. It will close correctly last video file which was still open if you powered down mini without stop recording first. The last file will become available again.

If you said is true, then it's a design flaw. Hopefully DJI could notice and correct it in future release.

One of my problems is that cached videos on my phone get deleted without any reasons even I still have plenty of spare storage and cache space is properly provisioned.

Debugger Posted at 1-12 23:03
Power up mini, start recording and stop it. It will close correctly last video file which was still open if you powered down mini without stop recording first. The last file will become available again.

That perfectly worked, thanks.
But beside of this solution i think ist an bug.
The drone can do the same during shut-down.
If you remove the akku i would understand this.

djiuser_JNwA7VB2JTMY Posted at 1-13 07:09
If you said is true, then it's a design flaw. Hopefully DJI could notice and correct it in future release.

One of my problems is that cached videos on my phone get deleted without any reasons even I still have plenty of spare storage and cache space is properly provisioned.

I have the same Problem on iOS, on Android ive not noticed this but on iOS on iPad Mini i have randomly not saved flight videos (received / cache footage)

I've been able to recover footage from corrupted mp4 files shot on my Mini using Recover_MP4, a free command line application in combination with ffmpeg. Instructions here: https://www.videohelp.com/software/recover-mp4-to-h264

The same happened to me yesterday, so yes, this is a bug that needs to be corrected.

Christian U Posted at 1-13 14:05
That perfectly worked, thanks.
But beside of this solution i think ist an bug.
The drone can do the same during shut-down.

Nice to hear that it worked for you too.

I don't think it's a bug. Consider to power down any camera while recording. The file will be corrupted.
It's miracle that we can save the file even with this tip.

Debugger Posted at 1-13 22:38
Nice to hear that it worked for you too.

I don't think it's a bug. Consider to power down any camera while recording. The file will be corrupted.

The Mini is an Linux computer and with holding the On/Off Button 3 secs it shuts down.
No newer Hardware then 10 yrs is shut down hard the most devices even stay in some sort of standby.
in the 1950´s i would prove you right, but now i see no real reason why dont stop recording during shutdown.

I would wish an option to start recording automatically when the Home point is updated, so that you cannot forget to start recording... (but that is an feature-request)

Christian U Posted at 1-13 22:55
The Mini is an Linux computer and with holding the On/Off Button 3 secs it shuts down.
No newer Hardware then 10 yrs is shut down hard the most devices even stay in some sort of standby.
in the 1950´s i would prove you right, but now i see no real reason why dont stop recording during shutdown.

From the early 00's until now I always use car dvr on my dashboard. The reason I change them is that when their battery die, they don't have power to close correctly the video file when I turn off my car.

When we power off the MM is a normal procedure for its Linux board, but it's a power cut its video recorder I think.
I agree with you that this should not happen.

net23 Posted at 1-13 14:39
I've been able to recover footage from corrupted mp4 files shot on my Mini using Recover_MP4, a free command line application in combination with ffmpeg. Instructions here: https://www.videohelp.com/software/recover-mp4-to-h264

I just wanted to thank you for posting that.  This could help a lot of people.

There is another thread about this.  I've lost a file this way myself.

As others have commented about:  The power button on the Mini is NOT an actual power switch, and does not cut off power to the drone.  Instead, this button acts as an I/O input point to the processor "requesting" it to shut itself down (actually, go into a low power mode).  You can tell that this is the case in two ways.

First, the feel of this switch is that of a momentary-contact pushbutton.  A momentary switch cannot be used as a true power switch, of course.

Second, to turn the Mini on or off, you must press once briefly, then press and hold.  This is obviously being "read" by the processor and it must interpret this pattern of button presses to decide what action to take.  A single press tells the Mini to display it's battery level.

Anyhow, the reason I make this point is to emphasize that it would only take a small code change by DJI to alter the sequence of events that happen when the Mini shuts itself down.  Just have it stop recording and finalize the video file properly and THEN proceed with its usual shut-down routine.

Please, DJI.  Do this for us.  And while you're at it, if the mini is auto-landing due to low battery.  Do the same thing.  Stop recording, finalize the file properly, and then shut down.  This is really an oversight in the programming that will be easy to fix, and will save a lot of problems for many customers.  It's a very worthwhile "feature" to add.

Thanks!

Sigmo Posted at 1-13 23:17
I just wanted to thank you for posting that.  This could help a lot of people.

Just this past weekend I made the mistake of shutting off the drone before stopping record and ended up with a corrupted mp4 that would not play or import... did a lot of searching... found a bunch of apps that basically encapsulate this process and cost money... when I found this process... it worked for me although I was able to recover the video, there were still artifacts and mess... one key thing about doing this is that the recover_mp4.exe process wants you to select a known good working example of the same type of file to read the settings from that file and recreate them for the recovery of the bad file. This is an important step so if you want to try this method make sure to have a small sample of the same resolution/frame rate video around to point the process at.

>recover_mp4.exe good.mp4 --analyze

It will create files 'video.hdr' and 'audio.hdr' in the current directory and print instructions (ffmpeg options, etc.).

Step 2: Recover streams from the corrupted file, for example

>recover_mp4.exe bad.mp4 recovered.h264 recovered.aac

Note: Files 'video.hdr' and 'audio.hdr' must be exist.
Probably you need to add a specific option (look at instructions from step 1).

Step 3: Use any other utility (Yamb or ffmpeg for example)
to recreate the MP4/MOV file from the streams (recovered.h264 and recovered.aac).

I also like that it gives you the exact command line to run with FFMPEG to then take the .h264 file and remux it into a MP4

Good luck.

Hi, There may be many reason for corrupt video files. I had also faced the problem in the past and repair my corrupt video file with help of Stellar Repair for Video software which can easily repair & recover my video files with simple steps. Keep in min before purchasing the software use the demo version and see the preview of repaired files!

Sigmo Posted at 1-13 23:24
There is another thread about this.  I've lost a file this way myself.

As others have commented about:  The power button on the Mini is NOT an actual power switch, and does not cut off power to the drone.  Instead, this button acts as an I/O input point to the processor "requesting" it to shut itself down (actually, go into a low power mode).  You can tell that this is the case in two ways.

" This is really an oversight in the programming that will be easy to fix, and will save a lot of problems for many customers.  It's a very worthwhile "feature" to add."

This problem has been around at least as long as the P3 has. I think DJI cured it in the P4P code, by shutting down and finalising the file. So it is strange that it is happening again with the Mini?

BTW, a poster wrote a simple utility to finalise the file, and made it freely available. You might do a search for it in the Phantom forum.

Ive used this Tool the first time i had the issue and it dosend support 2,7k Files.
After adding the constants for 2,7k it has produced an working file, but all 3 secs an second was black.

If i had the information this time i have now i just had to start recording on my mini again...

Debugger Posted at 1-12 23:03
Power up mini, start recording and stop it. It will close correctly last video file which was still open if you powered down mini without stop recording first. The last file will become available again.

Genius.  I'm a programmer, so I don't know why I didn't think about this.  It's a bug, but it makes some sense, at least.   It's only happened to be twice, but both times it was the last video recorded, so I was pretty sure I was going to find an answer.  And I did.  Thanks a lot.