Integrating drone technology into filmmaking has rewritten film production rules, directly impacting film budgets. These flying machines have opened up new horizons for filmmakers and have transformed aerial cinematography, once a complex and expensive process, into a cost-effective and accessible method for both aspiring and experienced filmmakers.
Drones have revolutionized the film industry in several ways, such as capturing stunning aerial footage that was previously impossible or costly. Since flexible drones can easily navigate through tight spaces, soar high above the landscape, or fly low to the ground.
No wonder videos shot from drone cameras are prized possessions. One can’t afford to lose this precious drone footage. However, you may lose your drone footage due to accidental deletion, unexpected crashes, or corruption.
Don’t Panic! Read on to learn the best method for recovering drone footage and how it can be lost from its SD card.
Reasons for Losing Videos from Drone Camera SD Card
There can be several reasons for losing drone camera footage, such as accidental deletion, improper file transfer, formatting of the SD card, etc. Here are some potential causes of losing drone footage.
- Loss of power: The drone footage can be corrupted or incomplete if a drone’s battery runs out or depletes in the middle of a flight.
- Drone Crashes: If your drone collides with objects such as buildings, etc. or flies out of control due to signal interference, it can crash. This can damage the drone’s physical and storage, leading to loss or inaccessible data.
- Deletion: If you accidentally or intentionally delete the drone footage, either from the drone camera interface, memory card or while transferring files, it can result in the loss of the drone footage.
- Various SD Card errors: If the SD card is not compatible with your drone camera or not formatted correctly, it can lead to a data loss situation. Moreover, if the drone camera SD card is physically damaged or corrupted, it can lead to inaccessible drone footage. You can lose the drone footage if the card has bad sectors or improper ejection.
- Corrupted Files: If the writing process in the drone camera during a flight is interrupted due to a loss of power or crash, then your video footage can get corrupted.
- Formatting Errors: If you accidentally format your drones and memory cards without saving their data, all your video footage will be gone.
How to Recover Drone Footage?
If you lose your drone footage, it’s natural to feel upset. Still, staying calm is important to recovering footage from a drone camera SD card.
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Stop Using the Drone Camera Memory Card
The first thing you must do is stop using the drone camera SD card to prevent overwriting of potentially recoverable data.
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Check for Backups
Those who maintain a backup of their drone camera and update it regularly have a good chance of recovering lost drone shots.
The first thing you need to do is check the backup. Do you have a drone camera SD card backup on your PC, cloud, or other external hard drive? If yes, restore the lost drone camera video from the backup folder.
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Use Professional Photo Recovery Software
Without a backup, use a professional photo recovery software to restore lost or deleted footage from the drone camera SD card.
Stellar Photo Recovery software can easily recover lost or deleted videos of any file format from the drone camera’s SD card. This tool restores deleted videos without hampering their original quality. This photo recovery software can also recover lost or deleted videos and photos from corrupted, damaged, or inaccessible drone camera SD cards. It can even recover lost images and video files from all popular drone camera brands like DJI, Skydio, GoPro, etc.
Steps to recover drone footage from drone camera SD card
- Download and install Stellar Photo Recovery software on your Windows or Mac.
- Connect your drone camera SD card from which you lost the footage to your system.
- Run the photo recovery software.
- On the home screen of the software, select the camera’s SD card and click Scan.
- The software will begin scanning the SD card and you can see the progress of the scan on the next screen.
- Once the scan is completed, you can see the list of recovered files.
- Preview the found drone camera videos, then select which video you want to restore and click Recover.
- Click Browse and choose a desired location on the drive to save recovered drone camera footage. Next, click Start Saving.
Tips to Avoid Video Loss from Drone Camera
- Properly insert or remove the drone camera’s SD card.
- Never shoot videos when the drone camera’s battery is low.
- Use a high-quality and trusted brand SD card.
- Don’t remove the SD card from the drone or computer while in use.
- Avoid using the Drone camera’s SD card on multiple devices.
- Handle the Drone camera’s SD card with utmost care to prevent physical damage.
- Don’t use the problematic SD card to avoid overwriting data.
- Before each flight, format the SD card to avoid any file system error.
- Take regular backups of your drone camera after each flight.
EndNote
Filmmakers who are into aerial cinematography adore drone cameras. They use it to shoot stunning aerial views and provide a wide view of landscapes, or action sequences. However, videos lost or deleted from drone cameras due to drone crashes, SD card corruption, accidental deletion, or formatting are among the biggest pet peeves.
Every filmmaker faces the situation of drone video loss at least once. It can be distressing, but there are ways to recover drone shots. Following the methods outlined in this blog, such as using Stellar Photo Recovery software and checking the backup, you can increase the chances of successfully recovering lost video photos.
//Staff writer
