Repair · Canon · MP4 · MOV · XF-AVC
Repair broken Canon footage.
EOS R5, R5 C, R6 Mark II, R3, R1 or Cinema EOS C70/C300 — Haven rebuilds MP4, MOV and XF-AVC after interrupted recordings, card damage or a failed recovery.
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Supported
- · EOS R5
- · EOS R5 C
- · EOS R6 II
- · EOS R3
- · EOS R1
- · C70
- · C300 Mark III
- · C500 Mark II
Recognize your problem?
Common damage patterns with Canon
CFexpress card throws a write error
The EOS R5 at a high bitrate (8K RAW or 4K HQ) puts extreme stress on CFexpress cards. On a write error the recording aborts — the file often has a correct size but will not play.
EOS R5 8K recording cut off by overheating
Before firmware update 1.5, the R5 shut off after a few minutes in 8K. When the shutdown hit mid-recording, a broken MOV file was left behind.
Cinema EOS XF-AVC with faulty metadata
The XF-AVC files from the Cinema EOS line carry extra Canon-specific boxes (a uuid with XML sidecar). With a damaged container this metadata is missing — Haven extracts it from the reference.
Dual-card recording: one card fine, one broken
When the R5/R3 write to two cards at once and one card hits a write error, the file there is damaged — the other card often holds the intact version, which serves as the reference.
Why does this happen?
The most common causes
01
CFexpress Type B write error under load
Some early CFexpress cards (cheap B-Type imports in particular) do not sustain their nominal 1700 MB/s. For 8K RAW (2600 Mbit/s = 325 MB/s) that is cutting it close — a buffer underrun aborts the recording.
02
Overheating in the EOS R5/R5 C
On longer 4K60p or 8K recordings the camera can hit a thermal cut. The file is closed abruptly and the moov header is often incomplete.
03
A battery swap at the wrong moment
Cinema EOS bodies can run on V-mount batteries — swapping one without a hot-swap plate cuts the recording. A classic recovery scenario.
04
Card accidentally formatted in the camera
When "Format" gets picked instead of "Delete" after a shoot, the files are logically gone but the content usually still sits on the card. Recoverable with recovery tools, then repairable with Haven.
How to do it
Repair in four steps
- 01
Remove the CFexpress or SD carefully
Take the card out and put it in a matching reader. For CFexpress use only high-quality readers (Sony, ProGrade) — cheap readers can cause data errors on large files (>20 GB).
- 02
Use the second card as a reference
With dual-card recording, the intact card often holds the exact reference. An older clip with identical settings (codec, resolution, frame rate, bitrate) works too.
- 03
Open the XF-AVC or MP4 in Haven
Haven recognises Canon-specific uuid boxes and handles them correctly. For Cinema EOS files it also reads the XML sidecar (CLIP*.XML) and uses it for the repair.
- 04
Check the preview, export
In the preview you can see whether the colour space (CLOG3, CLOG2, BT.2020) was recognised correctly. If not, Haven offers a manual choice. Then export as a recovered MP4/MOV.
Engineering detail
Canon Log and ALL-I codec nuances
Canon Log 3 (CLOG3) is a logarithmic colour curve that is flagged in the uuid box as a colour transfer function (PQ-like, but Canon-proprietary). With a truncated uuid, CLOG3 material is interpreted as BT.709 — flat and wrong. Haven reads the correct transfer from the reference and writes it back into the repaired file.
FAQ · Canon
Common questions
EOS R5 RAW Light — does that work?
RAW Light is its own format (container and codec) that normal MP4/MOV repair tools do not handle. Haven currently supports MP4/MOV/MXF containers — RAW Light is on the roadmap.
What if only one card had a backup?
If you only had one card, you need an older clip with identical settings as a reference. It can come from earlier shoots too, as long as codec, resolution, frame rate and bitrate class match.
Cinema EOS C70 with XF-AVC — is that possible?
Yes. At its core XF-AVC is H.264/H.265 in a MOV container with a Canon XML sidecar. Haven handles the container and the codec data in a standards-compliant way.
Does it also help with old Canon camcorders (XF305, XF300)?
If the format is MXF or MP4, yes. Very old AVCHD files (M2TS container) are not supported at the moment, because that is a different standard.
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