Need help accessing files on a camcorder - Vivitar DVR648HD

**simonlpearce** · 09-24-2012, 09:59 AM

Hi, first post n all and as expected i need your help to solve a problem.

I recently made some video's when at Anglesey race circuit. I know its a budget camcorder but its just for a bit of fun to chuck around in the track car.

I can view them on the screen on the camcorder but when i take the SD card out and put it into the drive on my computer its as if they don't exist.

I can play them when connecting from the camcorder to the tv.

I cant access them via the mini usb when connecting direct to the camcorder with the card still inside.

Any ideas? Can i recover these files?

Im guessing i should have formatted the SD card first or something as it was previously in a Sony digital camera. When browsing the card i can only see the following folders/files...

DCIM which is the master folder, which contains 100JLCAM and 100MEDIA.
100JLCAM has some of the mrs old photo's on and 100MEDIA is empty.

There are no other folders that i can see when i open the SD Card drive.

I have done a wildcard search for *.wmv which is what the last lot were recorded as with no joy. I have made sure to check show hidden files and folders with no joy. They are not stored on the camera's onboard memory as its not large enough. I have tried 3 different PC's and still no joy.

The SD Card is 8GB, according to the screen dumps below 3.43 of 7.39 GB is used, but only 45meg of that is the mrs photos that were already on the card. I just cannot access the remainder of the files.

Any other ideas???

**Stripe** · 09-24-2012, 10:46 AM

Hi Simon

Tricky one - but I notice 3 more checkboxes for hiding files under the 'show hidden files' tickbox - it may be worth trying to untick those as well.

I'd expect the files to be in the media folder, although the dates of the folders are strange - one year apart? Normally suggests it is a system date, rather than a user date, so yes, the formatting is probably something to do with this - but do those dates have relevance to you?

If it will stream to your TV, then can you not go via a HDD Recorder and record the stream so you can rescue the film?

Also, use another SD card, record on it and see where it puts the video files, then at least you will know where to look on your origianl SD card.

Those folder names may be generated by your old device, so your new device has no designated folder of its own to put the new movies.

**Midnight Blue** · 09-24-2012, 11:10 AM

As you can see the camera when connected to the computer via USB we can discount a connection problem. You can see the 47 photos in the 100JLCAM folder. I would guess the video is in the 100MEDIA folder. In my windows explorer folder options I never tick the "hide extensions for known file types" box, as I like to see what the file type is. According to the manual from the Vivitar website the file type for the video is .avi so but you said it is .wmv.

What happens when you copy the whole of the memory card across to your computer ?

Have you tried using the software that comes with the camera ?

It's very hard to know what's going on here but if you can play the files in the camera then you should be ok.

**simonlpearce** · 09-24-2012, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Midnight Blue

As you can see the camera when connected to the computer via USB we can discount a connection problem. You can see the 47 photos in the 100JLCAM folder. I would guess the video is in the 100MEDIA folder. In my windows explorer folder options I never tick the "hide extensions for known file types" box, as I like to see what the file type is. According to the manual from the Vivitar website the file type for the video is .avi so but you said it is .wmv.

What happens when you copy the whole of the memory card across to your computer ?

Have you tried using the software that comes with the camera ?

It's very hard to know what's going on here but if you can play the files in the camera then you should be ok.

Hi,

I have just done a wildcard search for avi also and cannot find anything. I also just did a * search and nothing new comes up.

Have tried the vivitar software and it only sees the photos, no videos...

I could stream it and try capture them on a HDD recorder but the quality is terrible when doing it this way, to the point its almost un-watchable...

Also meant to add - when copying the whole memory card to my desktop it still only picks up the same files.

**simonlpearce** · 09-24-2012, 12:02 PM

Problem solved!

Managed to get a ghost copy of the drive which i wanted to do before attempting the following as i was told it could totally corrupt the drive and i would loose all data.

Right click drive > tools tab > error checking

This found the files and put them in a new folder which i just had to rename as AVI files and job done!