How to Fix Corrupted Video Files on Android

You grabbed a video of a moment you wanted to immortalize for all eternity — or were pretty sure would go viral, or you’ve downloaded a funny video you’d like to show to others. And then, nothing: you’ve tried to check it out, but the video “doesn’t work”. Although it exists as a file, there’s no way to play it on your smartphone.

Don’t worry, for it’s usually possible to fix corrupted video files on Android. And even when the Android-friendly solutions fail in the most difficult corrupted video scenarios, you can often use more powerful tools on a PC to tackle the issue as we’ve done many times before. Let’s see how.

How to Fix Corrupted Videos on Your Android

When you don’t have access to a PC or are in a hurry, it’s possible to perform corrupted video file repair on Android using specialized apps or online services. These solutions are usually easier to use than the more complicated options available on a PC.

Method #1: Use an Online Video Repair Service

Did it prove impossible to play a corrupted video file on Android? There are many online “video-fixing” solutions you can try, but most impose artificial limitations on how you can use them.

Many aren’t free, won’t accept files larger than X MBs (where “X” usually translates to “around 500”), or may not support the format of the file you want to fix. That’s why we like Clever Online Video Repair.

Unlike many of its peers, Clever Online Video Repair supports many video container formats, including MP4, M4V, and DAT, that are associated with Android smartphones. Best of all, it allows you to upload and fix corrupted video files on Android of a size up to 5GBs for free.

Clever Online Video Repair has only two caveats:

• You must register to use it
• It requires a healthy sample file with the same “profile” as the corrupted one to pull off its magic. This sample might be another snippet recorded with the same settings from the phone’s camera app, or another video downloaded from the same source, that’s as close to the corrupted video as possible (with the same resolution, quality, etc.).

To fix corrupted videos on your Android device using Clever Online Video Repair:

1. Visit Clever Online Video Repair’s site with your favorite browser. You can choose to Sign up to create a new account or Log in if you already have one. However, if you haven’t signed up to create an account but already have a Google or Apple account, Clever Online Video Repair allows you to directly Log in using one of those accounts.
2. Choose Repair video.
3. Select Choose file and point the file requester to the corrupted video you want to fix. The next step will activate when the upload is complete.
4. Repeat the same process for Upload healthy sample; this time, uploading a file you know is healthy and plays fine.
5. Give Clever Online Video Repair some time to analyze and compare the files, then reassemble a fixed version of your corrupted video using the relevant healthy bits from your reference video.
6. Download the repaired file, which will hopefully be fully fixed and playable on your phone. If the file still has playback issues, try uploading another reference sample file since it might lead to a better outcome.

Method #2: Try the MP4Fix Video Repair Tool

If you cannot play corrupted video files on Android that are stored as MP4s, you can try to fix them using MP4Fix Video Repair Tool. Available through Google’s Play store, MP4Fix Video Repair Tool is the equivalent of Clever Online Video Repair in a standalone app.

To fix your corrupted videos on your Android device using MP4Fix:

1. Seek the app using its name, “MP4Fix”, on Google Play. Install and run it.
2. Grant MP4Fix access to your local media files to enable it to open and try to fix your videos.
3. Select the video file you want to repair.
4. Choose SELECT CORRECT FILE and give the app an MP4 file you know is “healthy” and can play without issues.
5. MP4Fix will inform you that it will copy parts of the healthy file to the problematic one to render it playable again and that this requires both files to be recorded on the same phone with the same app (and, we should add although the app skips that, with the same settings). Choose REPAIR to acknowledge that and proceed to the next step.
6. Give the app some time to complete the repair process.
7. You can Preview the results or choose Repair Again if the process fails or you want to fix another file. However, the options that allow you to Save, Play, or Share repaired videos are unfortunately “locked” in the app’s free version.
8. We ought to mention that we “faked” the above steps for this article by using a healthy file as input because MP4Fix failed to fix our files. The app couldn’t “find video data” in them and informed us “they couldn’t be fixed”.

Method #3: Convert Your Video With an App

Inverse AI’s Video Converter, Compressor is a popular and highly rated Android app that excels in what its very name describes: enabling us to convert and compress video files directly on an Android smartphone, without requiring “help” from a computer.

Still, for this article, we don’t care as much about its wide compatibility with various video file formats, that enable us to convert old 3GP and AVI files to the newer MP4 and MKV standards, but about the side-effect of such a process: producing “repaired” new videos. That’s because, by converting and re-compressing an input video, the app re-assembles and re-indexes its contents. Thus, even when playing a corrupted video file on Android proves impossible, maybe a newly converted and recompressed “clone” of the original might play fine.

To use Video Converter, Compressor as a solution for video repair on Android:

1. Search for the app at Google Play using its name, “Video Converter, Compressor”. If you see multiple results, pick the one made by Inverse AI. Then, install the app, run it, and tap on the biggest of its buttons, Convert or Compress.
2. Select your file, and you’ll be greeted with a bunch of options. From the main ones, you can change the file’s format and resolution, but the rest (with red icons) are unavailable “premium features” of the paid version of the app.
3. The options under Advanced allow you to customize important characteristics of the produced video, like its Frame Rate and Video & Audio Codecs. Feel free to skip them if you only care about getting a “playable” version of your video back.
4. Video Converter, Compressor’s defaults prioritize speed over quality. If you’d prefer improved quality than a speedy process when re-encoding the file, change the Video Codec from H264 (Fast) to H264 (High). AV1 can be even better but also slower, while MPEG4, MPEG2, and MPEG1 are, in that order, progressively quicker and the fastest out of all the codecs, but also have the lowest quality.
5. To re-compress the file using different codecs and settings, you’ll also need to flick the Compress toggle to the right. You can then use the options underneath it to change the Video Bitrate and Audio Bitrate. Higher values will produce higher quality but larger files. When you’ve configured everything as you like (or skipped all options), tap on Convert on the bottom right. Accept, tweak, or change the suggested Output File Name. Then, either go for ADD TO QUEUE if you want to have the app process more files or START NOW to have it immediately start working on the active one.
6. After a while (depending on your file’s characteristics, size, and Android device’s performance), Video Converter, Compressor will show you a summary of the outcome. Underneath, the app will present shortcuts from which you can Play the file, Share it (for “forwarding” the file to Dropbox, an email, etc.), Feedback and Help (that you can safely ignore), and OK, which you should choose to close the on-screen dialog. We suggest you don’t tap on Delete Original until you’ve checked out the file Video Converter, Compressor produced.

How to Repair Corrupted Android Videos Using Your Computer

Access to a PC offers you more options when video repair on Android proves impossible (or you might prefer how it’s much more convenient), and we’ve already covered such online tools and desktop apps before. Among them, tools like the versatile VLC Player or the Swiss Army Knife of media, FFmpeg, may be able to restore a corrupted video file that refuses to play on your Android device.

Method #1: Use VLC Player

Among the dozens of media players, VLC Player is not just “an app you use for playing videos”, but a true multitool. It offers the highest chances of playing “problematic” files and comes with extra tools for manipulating them in various ways. Among those, hidden within the app’s submenus are functions that may help you fix corrupted video files you couldn’t play on your Android device.

By default, VLC Player can often play corrupted AVI files by ignoring minor issues or “fixing them on the fly”. If that feature was disabled, VLC Player won’t be able to play semi-broken AVI files, like many of its peers.

To re-enable automatic AVI file repairs in VLC Player:

1. From VLC Player’s main horizontal menu, select Tools > Preferences, or press the CTRL + P combination on your keyboard.
2. Move to the Input/Codecs section, and ensure the drop-down menu next to Damaged or incomplete AVI file is set to “Ask for action” to have VLC Player ask you how you want to proceed whenever you try to play such a file. Alternatively, change the option to “Fix when necessary” to have the app skip the fixing process when it can play a file even if it detects some issues with it, or “Always fix” to have it automatically repair every AVI file it believes “requires fixing”.

As stated by the app itself, the above only applies to AVI files. Many suggest renaming a semi-problematic MP4 or MKV file to an AVI extension to have VLC fix it, but that ignores the differences between those file containers and rarely works. Plus, it’s not required since VLC Player also tries to play problematic files stored in those formats, even if it doesn’t attempt to fix them automatically. Still, that’s often possible by using the app not as a media player but as a converter.

To convert your corrupted videos with VLC Player and potentially get “fixed” versions of them:

1. From VLC Player’s main horizontal menu, choose Media > Convert / Save, or press CTRL + R on your keyboard.
2. Click Add on the right of the File Selection list and choose the corrupted file you want to repair. Then, click Convert/Save at the bottom right of that window.
3. Change the profile of the produced file (1) if you’d like to use different compression methods for its streams. The icon with the wrench, directly on the right, allows you to further customize the compression in more detail (for example, by defining the bitrate that the video encoding algorithm will use). Click on Browse under Destination (2) to choose the name and location of the converted file. Finally, click on Start (3).

Method #2: Harness FFmpeg

Although it’s one of the most powerful media manipulation tools, enabling you to convert and re-encode video and audio streams, and compatible with all major codecs and media formats, FFmpeg is not the best solution you could use to fix corrupted video files that won’t play on Android. Still, it might help you fix a “lightly” corrupted video file.

Before we begin, download FFmpeg from its official site and install it. Note that the app will be accessible from the command line afterward and not through a GUI, so you’ll have to fire up CMD or PowerShell and type commands to use it.

FFmpeg won’t be able to help if your file is missing its “moov atom”, like this case we run into on Reddit. For that, check our guide on how to deal with videos that won’t play because of moov atom not found errors. That’s a problem that shows up when a very specific part of a video file is damaged.

More often, the problems with a corrupted video file stem from a “glitched” writing process that can affect its beginning, end, or a range of frames. The easiest way to deal with such issues is to copy the corrupted file into a new one “through” FFmpeg. That’s because the app won’t perform a typical copy, like when using a file manager. Instead, it will “stream it into the new file” and, while doing that, skip any problematic sequences. The result will (ideally) be a playable video file that might be missing some frames or “jump” a second here or there while playing.

To copy a video into another file “through” FFmpeg, run CMD or PowerShell, and type the command:

ffmpeg -i corrupted_video.mp4 -c copy fixed_video.mp4

Replace “corrupted_video.mp4” with your original corrupted video and “fixed_video.mp4” with the filename of the new video FFmpeg will produce.

Is the new file riddled with issues, too, continuously skipping many parts, or is it much larger than you’d like? You can re-encode and compress it with FFmpeg.

To re-encode and compress a video with FFmpeg, use the command:

ffmpeg -i corrupted_video.mp4 -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 20 -c:a aac -b:a 256k fixed_video.mp4

As with the previous example, remember to rename the input and output video with the filenames of your own files. This command will re-encode your video using the H264 video codec’s “slow” preset and a “constant quality” of 20 (the “-crf 20” switch) and the AAC audio codec with a 256 KB bitrate. That’s a typical combination for a high-quality encoding with the most popular video and audio codecs today. And yet, it won’t produce ideal results. For that, you’ll have to use more advanced, newer codecs.

For example, to use AOM’s implementation of the AV1 video codec instead, with a higher compression value that’s adequate for 4K and HD resolutions, and the Opus audio codec, use the following command:

ffmpeg -i corrupted_video.mp4 -c:v libaom-av1 -crf 30 -c:a libopus -b:a 256k fixed_video.mp4

Need More Help? Join Online Communities!

The solutions we saw can help with some of the most common cases of damaged media files. If they didn’t manage to help you repair and play your corrupted video file on your Android device or your PC, you probably have a more exotic type of damaged video file in your hands (or, rather, your smartphone’s storage). That doesn’t mean you should give up hope and consider your video gone.

You can tap into the collective wisdom of over two million readers of Reddit’s Android community to find others who might have faced similar issues with the same Android device and apps you’ve been using. Or, you could ask for help in the more specialized VideoEditing subreddit, where hobbyists and specialists who love anything related to video hang out.

Similarly, it’s worth checking out our own Handy Recovery Advisor Community, where you’ll find many experts and pros chatting about data recovery. If anything, they know better than anyone how to get lost or damaged files back and will be happy to lend a helping hand.

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