Production · interview production cards and drives
interview production: recover after a failed drive handoff
What should I do when files disappear during the interview production handoff?
Short answer
First freeze every card and drive, then ask both editors what they received: interview audio from a separate recorder often travels on a different drive than the camera clips. Check whether the handoff was a move rather than a copy, search all drives by exact filename and only then scan the original cards read-only.
The situation
Media was handed to another editor or drive and is now missing from both expected locations.
Interview material travels in two streams, camera clips and recorder audio, and they often go to different people on different drives. Files missing on both sides usually mean one stream was moved rather than copied, and the move did not finish.
01 / Diagnose
Work out what actually disappeared
The editor receives picture, the sound assistant receives the WAV tree, and each assumes the other has the rest. Add a move operation that deletes sources as it goes, camera file names that repeat between the two bodies, and a destination folder created automatically by the copy tool, and material disappears without anybody deleting anything on purpose.
Move operations, duplicate filenames and destination assumptions can fail between teams. For interview production, this matters because the interview production combines several sources, takes and handoff steps that must be reconciled as a set
Check the last known path, trash and backups without writing to the original device.
02 / Protect the source
Preserve the best recovery chance
- 1
Freeze every drive and card involved and ask each person exactly which folders they received and from whom.
- 2
Search all drives for the exact file names, and check the recorder tree separately from the camera folders.
- 3
Establish whether the transfer was a move or a copy, and whether it reported an error or was cancelled.
- 4
Scan the drive that last held the files read-only and export anything found to a third, uninvolved disk.
Do not repeat the handoff onto the drive that lost the files, and do not empty its trash or run a cleanup tool first. Interview audio is small, so new writes cover deleted WAV files quickly and leave the picture without usable sound.
03 / Choose the method
Match the tool to the source
For stable, readable exFAT, NTFS and FAT16/FAT32 or uncompressed IMG, DD, RAW and BIN images.
Unconfirmed exports are marked .UNVERIFIED.
A scan covers drives that still mount and use exFAT, NTFS or FAT16/FAT32; APFS and HFS+ drives from a Mac edit suite are not readable. On SSD storage, TRIM often releases deleted blocks at once, so waiting reduces what can still be found.
04 / Verify
Check the recovered content, not just its name
Both streams must arrive complete: the same clip count per camera and the same WAV count as the recorder wrote, each with its original byte size. Sync one answer per speaker to prove that picture and sound belong to the same take and run to the end.
Keep the source until two verified copies exist. One working preview is not enough.
Sources and technical references
FAQ
Questions about this recovery case
Can interview production cards and drives be recovered in this situation?+
Interview material travels in two streams, camera clips and recorder audio, and they often go to different people on different drives. Files missing on both sides usually mean one stream was moved rather than copied, and the move did not finish. The result still depends on what remains readable on the source.
What should I avoid before scanning?+
Do not repeat the handoff onto the drive that lost the files, and do not empty its trash or run a cleanup tool first.
Does scanning write to my memory card?+
Your memory card is only read. Nothing is saved to it.
How do I know whether the result is complete?+
Both streams must arrive complete: the same clip count per camera and the same WAV count as the recorder wrote, each with its original byte size.