RSV Rescue

RSV Rescue › Guides › GoPro video won’t play after the battery died

GoPro video won’t play after the battery died

The battery died, the card filled up or the camera took a knock, and now the last clip won’t open. The footage is usually still there.

Why the clip won’t open

A GoPro writes picture and sound to the card as it films. When you press stop, it adds one last piece to the end of the file: an index that tells players where every frame and sound sample is. If the camera loses power, the card fills or the battery pops out first, that index never gets written. The .MP4 has your footage in it but no map, so QuickTime, VLC, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve all refuse to open it, or show it as 0 seconds long.

Is the footage still there?

Look at the file size on your computer. A clip of a few minutes should be hundreds of megabytes or more. If the size looks right, the picture and sound are inside and the clip can usually be rebuilt. If it shows 0 bytes or only a few kilobytes, nothing was written to it, and rebuilding can’t help.

How to get it back

  1. Stop filming on that card and copy everything on it to your computer. GoPro clips are in DCIM/100GOPRO/.
  2. Optional: put the card back in the GoPro with a charged battery and switch it on. Many GoPro cameras try to repair an interrupted clip themselves; if you see a repair message, let it finish. Only do this after you have your copy.
  3. If the clip still won’t play, open rsvrescue.com and drop the broken .MP4 from your copy. It’s read in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
  4. Watch the free preview with sound, then pay once for that file to save the full repaired .MP4.

The repair keeps the camera’s original picture and sound and only writes the missing index, so nothing is re-encoded and the quality is identical. It works on GoPro HERO5 to HERO8, HERO11, MAX and Fusion.

Which file is the broken one?

Long GoPro recordings are split into chapters of about 4 GB, such as GH010042.MP4, GH020042.MP4 and so on. When the camera dies mid-take, the earlier chapters are fine and only the last one is broken. The small .LRV (low-resolution preview) and .THM (thumbnail) files next to it aren’t your footage; keep them, but repair the .MP4.

Try the free preview → Drop the GoPro .MP4 that won’t open and watch your recovered clip before you pay anything.