Production · interview production cards and drives
interview production: repair an incomplete ingest workflow
How do I investigate an incomplete ingest from the interview production?
Short answer
Not by copying again: list the clips on the untouched card against the destination and your interview log, speaker by speaker. Gaps usually trace back to an interrupted copy, an import filter, duplicate clip names overwriting each other or a delete-after-import option. Only files missing from the card itself need a read-only recovery scan.
The situation
The destination contains only part of the material from the interview production.
Part of the interview material is at the destination and part is not. The cards are the reference here, not the copy: comparing them speaker by speaker shows whether anything is genuinely lost or merely never transferred in the first place.
01 / Diagnose
Work out what actually disappeared
Interview shoots produce a very regular structure, which makes gaps easy to spot and easy to cause. Cameras write identical file names on both bodies, so one folder can overwrite another. Import filters set to video skip the recorder's WAV files. And a transfer stopped part way leaves the last answers of the session behind while everything earlier looks complete.
A copy interruption, filter, duplicate name or delete-after-import action can leave gaps. 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
Keep all three cards untouched and out of the cameras until the comparison with the destination is finished.
- 2
List each card against the destination and the interview log, speaker by speaker, comparing file names, counts and byte sizes.
- 3
Copy what is missing straight from the card into a folder named per device, so identical camera file names cannot collide.
- 4
Only for files absent from the card itself, run a read-only scan and export the results to the edit drive.
Do not run the import again with the same settings, because a delete-after-import option will then clear cards whose content never arrived. And do not format a card because the folder count looks right; count the audio files as well before deciding.
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.
Anything still on a card is a copy job, not a recovery job. Where a scan is needed, it reads exFAT, NTFS and FAT16/FAT32 media only, works read-only, and exports to a different drive; it does not repair clips that were written incompletely.
04 / Verify
Check the recovered content, not just its name
The ingest is complete when both camera folders and the recorder folder hold the same files as their cards, with identical byte sizes, and when the interview log lists no unanswered question. Sync one clip per speaker with the external audio to confirm nothing was truncated.
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?+
Part of the interview material is at the destination and part is not. The cards are the reference here, not the copy: comparing them speaker by speaker shows whether anything is genuinely lost or merely never transferred in the first place. The result still depends on what remains readable on the source.
What should I avoid before scanning?+
Do not run the import again with the same settings, because a delete-after-import option will then clear cards whose content never arrived.
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?+
The ingest is complete when both camera folders and the recorder folder hold the same files as their cards, with identical byte sizes, and when the interview log lists no unanswered question.