Your camera stopped mid‑record. The file will not open.

Know it will work before you buy

The checker on this page reads your damaged file and tells you exactly how much of it survived — the frame count and the running time, measured with the same engine the app uses. It runs in your browser, on any computer, and costs nothing.

So you see the answer for your own file, on your own machine, before you spend anything. Then the app rebuilds it.

How it works

1. Check the file here first, free, and see how many frames are recoverable.
2. Drop it into Cinesalve. GoPro recordings carry their own codec configuration and are read on their own, in both the H.264 and the HEVC modes the range records; the ones that do not ask for any clip from the same camera that plays, and read it from there.
3. The recording is rebuilt and saved, playable again.

Nothing is uploaded. Your footage never leaves your Mac and there is no account. Activating a licence checks it once online; after that the app works with the network switched off. Damaged recordings are often the only copy of something private, and they should not have to travel to a stranger’s server to be read.

How exact is the recovery

Exact, on everything measured so far, including footage written by real cameras. The test compares a repaired file against the original it was cut from and counts a frame as recovered only when it lands at the same position and the same size the camera wrote. A frame decoded from a repaired file is byte‑for‑byte identical to the same frame in the original.

Real GoPro recordings, straight off the cameras, recovered from the damaged file on its own with no reference clip: every frame exact, the codec configuration rebuilt identical to the real one, and no decoder errors.

Recordings that do not state their own configuration are detected automatically and read it from any working clip from the same camera. The last column says what each measurement here was made against:

And the same measure against files encoded on a computer, across resolutions, frame rates and cut points:

What it recovers

Picture, exactly. Every recovered frame lands at the byte offset and size the camera originally wrote, on every real camera in the suite above. That is the part that matters and it is not approximate.

Sound, where it can be placed with certainty. On recordings that keep audio in its own block it comes back with the picture. Action cameras write timecode and telemetry into the same block as the video, and Cinesalve recovers the picture from those rather than writing anything it is not sure of into your recording.

H.264 and HEVC in MP4 and MOV, which is what consumer and prosumer cameras record. GoPro HERO5 through HERO8, Karma, Fusion, MAX, DJI, an iPhone, a Canon EOS DSLR, a Sony 4K camcorder, a 1080p consumer camera and Apple's own muxer are all measured exact. Bring anything else and it will be measured too.

Is your file recoverable? Check it here

This runs in your browser and one file is all it needs. Nothing is uploaded, and it works on any computer including Windows, even though the app itself is Mac only.

Questions people actually ask

Will it work on my camera?

Measured exact on GoPro HERO5 through HERO8, Karma, Fusion and MAX, on a DJI Mavic 3 Pro, on an iPhone 11, on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, on a Sony FDR-AX100E, on a 1080p consumer camera, and on QuickTime files written by Apple's own muxer. Drop your file into the checker above and it will tell you, for your file specifically, how many frames are recoverable — before you decide anything.

How do I know it will work on my file?

Check it first. The checker above runs the same engine the app uses and reports the exact frame count and running time it can recover from your file. That answer costs nothing and takes seconds, so you buy knowing the number rather than hoping.

Is my footage uploaded anywhere?

No. It runs entirely on your Mac. Activating a licence checks it once online; after that it works with the network switched off. No account, no sign‑in, no telemetry. A damaged recording is often the only copy of something private, and it should not have to travel to a stranger's server to be read.

Do I need a second clip from the camera?

Usually not. Every GoPro in the table above states its own codec configuration inside the video, in the H.264 and the HEVC modes alike, and Cinesalve reads it there — drop in the damaged file on its own and it works. An iPhone needs no second clip either, by a different route: about ten seconds into a take, iOS writes a complete index into the middle of the recording, and a take longer than that carries its own answer, sound included. Recordings that carry neither, such as DJI, are told apart automatically and ask for a working clip from the same camera; a few seconds recorded now is enough.

My file is 0 bytes. Can you help?

No, and neither can anything else that works on the file itself. If the camera never wrote the footage there is nothing inside to rebuild. Your remaining option is card level recovery software that scans for orphaned data, and you should stop using that card immediately.

Does the sound come back?

On recordings that keep audio in its own block, yes: roughly nine frames in ten land correctly. Action cameras write telemetry into the same block as the picture, and Cinesalve recovers the picture from those rather than writing bytes it cannot verify into your recording. Picture is exact either way.

Is there a Windows version?

The app is for macOS. The checker on this page works on any computer, Windows included, so you can confirm what is recoverable from anywhere.

Subscription?

No. $69 once, every Mac you own, for good. The key works offline and is not tied to an account.

If it does not recover your footage

You get your money back. Email cinesalve@proton.me with the licence key and a sentence about what happened, and the refund goes through the same day. No form, no conditions, no arguing about whether it counts.

That is an easy promise to make because you already know the answer before you buy: the checker above reads your own file and tells you how many frames are recoverable. Nobody should be paying to find out whether their footage survived.

A real person reads that address, and answers questions about damaged files whether or not you have bought anything. Send the camera model and what happened and you will get a straight answer, including when the answer is that the footage is gone.

Getting it

Cinesalve is a single Mac app, macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon and Intel.

Cinesalve is not yet signed with an Apple developer certificate, so macOS will refuse it the first time. This is one step, once:

1. Drag Cinesalve to your Applications folder and double‑click it. macOS will say it cannot be opened.
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway next to Cinesalve.
3. Confirm. It opens normally from then on.

Control‑clicking and choosing Open no longer works: Apple removed that shortcut in macOS 15. If you would rather use the terminal, this does the same job in one line:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cinesalve.app

Licence

One licence covers every Mac you own, for good. Buy it when the recovered footage is on your screen and you have decided it was worth it.