Production · wedding film production cards and drives
wedding film production: repair an incomplete ingest workflow
How do I investigate an incomplete ingest from the wedding film production?
Short answer
Start from the cards, not the drive: keep every card from the wedding untouched and compare the ingest folder file by file with the card contents and your shot list. Clips that are still on a card can simply be copied again. Scan a card read-only only when the missing clips are no longer visible on it.
The situation
The destination contains only part of the material from the wedding film production.
Part of the wedding sits on the edit drive, the rest does not. Because the cards were not reformatted yet, the gap is a copy problem rather than a loss: the material most likely still exists on the card it was recorded on.
01 / Diagnose
Work out what actually disappeared
Ingest on a wedding usually runs late at night, across several readers, with cards arriving in whatever order the shooters hand them over. A transfer that was cancelled, a card pulled early, two cards whose clips carry the same camera-generated names, or an import filter set to video only all leave the same partial folder behind.
A copy interruption, filter, duplicate name or delete-after-import action can leave gaps. For wedding film production, this matters because the wedding film 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
Put every wedding card into write-protected storage and tell the team that none of them may be formatted or reused for the next job.
- 2
List each card and the ingest folder side by side, comparing file names, clip counts and byte sizes rather than folder totals.
- 3
Copy the missing clips again, card by card, into a folder named for that camera and slot so identical file names cannot collide.
- 4
Only where a clip is absent from the card as well, scan that card read-only and export the result to the edit drive.
Do not reformat a card because the ingest looked finished, and do not let the import tool delete sources after copying while the comparison is still open. Overwriting a card that holds the only copy of the vows turns a copy problem into a real loss.
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.
Copying again solves everything the cards still hold, and no recovery software is needed for that. A scan only helps for clips deleted from a card that is readable and formatted exFAT, NTFS or FAT32; export always goes to another drive, never back to the source.
04 / Verify
Check the recovered content, not just its name
The ingest is complete when every card has the same clip count and the same byte size per clip at the destination, and when the shot list has no gaps between arrival, ceremony, dinner and dance. Play the last clip of each card; truncated files usually sit at the end of a transfer.
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 wedding film production cards and drives be recovered in this situation?+
Part of the wedding sits on the edit drive, the rest does not. Because the cards were not reformatted yet, the gap is a copy problem rather than a loss: the material most likely still exists on the card it was recorded on. The result still depends on what remains readable on the source.
What should I avoid before scanning?+
Do not reformat a card because the ingest looked finished, and do not let the import tool delete sources after copying while the comparison is still open.
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 every card has the same clip count and the same byte size per clip at the destination, and when the shot list has no gaps between arrival, ceremony, dinner and dance.