GoPro Recovery (gpr.exe from CnW Recovery Developments Ltd)

Features

Deleted file recovery, after accidental deletion or formatting

o Separate routine optimised for each camera family o Log of all files recovered and their validation status and dates. o Optional forensic log showing all locations* used to reconstruct the GoPro video file o Recovers JPEGs. o Recovers .wav and .gpr for Hero 5/6/⅞/9/10/11

Features available for forensic version)

o Unfinalised file recovery. eg if memory chip is removed while recording, or there is a serious physical damage to camera that prevents finalisation o Hero 3 - V1.25 o Hero 4 - V1.28, reconstruct .LVR files that have not be finalised o Hero 4 /5/6/7/8/910/11/Max Recovery of fragments, ie video with no header or trailer (ftyp or moov). o GPS values added to the log for videos and photos o Special display to show how sectors have been allocatyd on the memory chip o Watch YouTube video

Recovery from memory chip or hard drive?

This software package is designed to work with the memory chip only. If you read below you will discover that the data on the memory chip is very fragmented. Once copied to the hard drive, the file is typically in a single sequence and so can be recovered with data carving. Many companies say they can recover GoPro Hero files but actually mean they can recover from a deleted hard drive. We are not are of any other package (except CnW Recovery) that will work with the original GoPro memory chip. GoPro Studio - auto deletion GoPro Studio has a feature where the SD memory card can be deleted automatically after copying to PC. Unfortunately there are reports of the copy not working correctly, but the memory chip still being deleted. Fortunately GoPro Recovery will rescue users from this problem. Just make sure that the card is not written to or used before a full receovery is made.

Why is GoPro complex to recover?

A MP4 style video file has three main elements, ftyp, moov, and mdat. Ftyp is a simple header that contains a small amount of fixed information. Moov contains amongst other elements, pointers to every frame in the video. Mdat is the video stream. When a recording is started the length is obviously unknown. It could be a few seconds or several minutes. At this point some cameras start a ftyp-moov atom, and others store it in memory. The the video is written in the mdat atom. However, GoPro Hero 3 and 4/5/6/7/8/9 cameras can store a low resolution file (.lvr) as well as the standard MP4. These are stored in blocks, physically interleaved. Then there may be 256 sectors of low resolution, followed by approx 4096 sectors of high resolution. The blocks are puer data streams with no nice headers and reconstruction is not simple. The GoProRecovery program has to analyse the contents of each possible block in order to determine if is correct. An added complication can be still JPEGs embedded in this data stream - which can include a simple thumbnail photo. This type of file structure means that GoPro and simple data carving does not work. Fix corrupted video files? There are many programs that claim to fixed corrupted video files. However, we suspect most of these corrupted video files are in fact incorrectly recovered video files. It is possible to reconstruct indexes so that a file may play, but it is impossible to recreate video frames that have not been recovered. GoPro recovery aims to recover the correct data first and only if indexes are missing recreate the index.

Log file

The program does produce a comprehensive log. This includes all files recovered, sizes, dates and details about video resolution. The forensic version also includes hash values , GPS and full details of the location of each fragment recovered. If a JPG entry is double clicked, the photos will be displayed. The entries can be exported as a .csv file.