Video-Fix-98 is a self-contained tool that rescues video files damaged by corruption, truncation, or broken index structures. It reads the file the way a player would — frame by frame, beginning to end — finds the stretches that are frozen or broken, and rebuilds a clean, continuous, playable video containing only the genuine motion frames.
No AI. No cloud. Pure Python calling ffmpeg and (optionally) untrunc, both installed natively on your machine.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| 🖥️ GUI | Desktop app (tkinter) with drag-resize panes, progress bars, three-tab notebook, session save/restore |
| 🔍 Check | Assess any video and report the damage: how much real content is left, size, duration, resolution, audio, error type, and what's recoverable |
| ⚡ Quick check | Healthy files detected in ~5s (skips the full freezedetect pass) |
| 🔧 Repair | Fix it — automatically choosing the best method for the damage found |
| 🧠 Auto mode | Picks the right fix: moov missing → untrunc, frozen frames → salvage, container damage → remux |
| 📋 Reports | Console report + CSV export + in-GUI Report/Results tabs with filtering |
| 🎛️ Interactive | Guided walkthrough: explains every option, asks for your values |
| 📦 Batch | Point at a folder and it processes every video in it (recursive with --recursive) |
| 🎵 Audio salvage | Partial audio recovery — trims audio to match salvaged video segments |
| ⏸️ Pause/Stop | Pause between files, stop mid-process with partial results shown |
| 💾 Session save | Save full session (sources, check results, repair data, checked state) as JSON; import to resume later |
| 🛡️ Safety | Never overwrites your original — auto-appends _salvaged, collision-safe (1), (2) naming |
Download the self-contained exe from releases:
Video-Fix-98.exe— GUI (double-click)salvage.exe— CLI
Download the v1.3.0-linux release binaries, or run from source:
./setup.sh
python3 salvage.py broken.mp4 --mode repair
python3 gui.py # GUI (requires tkinter)docker compose up -d --build
# Open http://localhost:6080/vnc.htmlThe GUI runs in a browser via noVNC. Drop files in input/, repaired files land in output/.
You're digging through an old hard drive — 87 videos from 2015. Some freeze. Some won't open. Or maybe it's a half-downloaded torrent. Or a WhatsApp clip that arrived at 2MB instead of 20MB.
Video-Fix-98 is a corrupt detective. Point it at a folder. It walks every subfolder, finds every video, checks each one, tells you what's wrong, and trims off the fat — extracting only the real frames onto a clean timeline.
You keep the memories. You drop the corruption.
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
--mode check (default) |
Read-only assessment. Reports size, resolution, codecs, claimed vs real duration, frozen stretches, estimated repair outcome. |
--mode repair |
Runs the check, then repairs. Final report shows actual output size/duration. |
| Fix | What it does |
|---|---|
--fix auto (default) |
Decides the best method automatically from the damage found |
--fix salvage |
Trim frozen stretches, re-encode real motion frames into a continuous video |
--fix remux |
Lossless container rebuild (-c copy, metadata preserved). Falls back to salvage if the index lies. |
--fix untrunc |
Rebuilds a missing/corrupt moov index using a healthy reference file |
--fix none |
No fix — report only |
| Argument | Default | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
input |
(required) | Source file or folder (folder = batch) |
--mode MODE |
check |
check = assess only; repair = assess + fix |
--fix FIX |
auto |
Repair method |
--reference FILE |
(auto) | Healthy reference for --fix untrunc |
--out-dir DIR |
beside input / Video Fixer Output |
Output location |
--container NAME |
mkv |
Output container: mkv, mp4, mov, avi, ts, webm, m4v, flv |
--codec NAME |
h264 |
Video codec: h264, hevc, vp9, av1 |
--audio-mode MODE |
copy |
Audio: off (drop), copy (keep if decodable), aac (re-encode 128k) |
--min-freeze N |
2.0 |
Minimum frozen stretch (seconds) to trim |
--noise VALUE |
-60dB |
Pixel-difference threshold for "same frame" |
--margin N |
1.0 |
Safety buffer (seconds) around each frozen zone |
--crf N |
20 |
Encode quality — lower = better quality but bigger |
--preset NAME |
veryfast |
Encode speed/size: ultrafast → veryfast → medium → slow |
--fps N |
50 |
Output frame rate |
--recursive |
off | When input is a folder, scan subdirectories recursively |
--no-quick |
off | Disable quick check for healthy files (force full freezedetect) |
--force-pass |
off | Run full frame pass even on sparse files |
--interactive |
off | Walk through every option step by step |
--report PATH |
(prompt) | Write CSV report without prompting |
--gui |
off | Emit VF98PCT progress lines for the desktop GUI |
-h, --help |
— | Show full usage |
- Three-tab notebook: Progress Log | Report | Results
- Sidebars: Drag-resize source queue and output folder panes
- Check button: Scans all source files, populates Report tab with per-file results
- Quick skip: Healthy files check in ~5s, corrupt files get full freezedetect
- Checkmarks: ✓ prefix in source list for successfully checked files
- Filter: Report tab dropdown filters by All / Corrupt only / Healthy only
- Uncheck healthy by default: Only corrupt files are auto-ticked for repair
- Progress bar: Green native bar during both Check and Repair phases
- Phase labels: Status bar shows "encoding 67%" / "muxing" during repair
- Partial audio salvage: Audio trimmed to match salvaged video segments
- Pause: Waits for current file, then pauses before next
- Stop: Immediately terminates, partial results shown
- Session save/restore: JSON stores sources, check results, repair data, checked state
- Import: Resumes from last unchecked file — doesn't re-check completed files
- Sub-folders: Checkbox for recursive folder scanning
- Output same as source: Checkbox to save repaired files alongside originals
After any run, a report is printed to the console. The tool then asks whether
to save it as CSV. For automation, pass --report <path>.
CSV columns: file, size_bytes, alloc_pct, resolution, video_codec, fps, audio_codec, claimed_duration, good_seconds, decodable_pct, estimated_size_bytes, error, final_size_bytes, final_duration, final_frozen_seconds, verdict (final columns filled by repair mode only).
- Your original is never modified. Output always goes to a new file.
- Filenames: Auto-suffixed
_salvagedbefore extension; if a name conflicts, Windows-style(1),(2)numbering is used. - Sparse files (never downloaded, only pre-allocated) are detected and skipped unless
--force-passis set. - Quick check skips the expensive freezedetect pass on apparently healthy files (no error signature, >95% allocated, duration >0).
video-salvage/
├── salvage.py # CLI tool (Python stdlib)
├── gui.py # Desktop GUI (tkinter)
├── setup.sh # Cross-platform dependency installer
├── Dockerfile # Web-accessible container (noVNC)
├── docker-compose.yml # One-command Docker launch
├── docker-entrypoint.sh # Xvfb + VNC + noVNC startup
├── requirements.txt # Python deps (pillow)
├── .github/workflows/ # CI: build-windows.yml, build-linux.yml
├── assets/ # icon.png, logo.png
├── README.md # this file
└── DEBRIEF.md # session-by-session dev log
This tool is a thin orchestrator that stands on the shoulders of:
ffmpeg.org — the world's leading multimedia framework.
Salvage uses ffmpeg's freezedetect, select, setpts, and encoder filters.
github.com/anthwlock/untrunc —
rebuilds missing/corrupt moov index atoms using a healthy reference.
Free to use, modify, and share.