Error 2041 code invalid sample description on an MP4 video

Question

I'm stuck in a dark hole facing potential loss of important videos. A while ago I transferred some 4k videos from a camera SD card to a portable drive to save for later edit, and foolishly reformatted the card. Now although they show the data size (and file type as MPEG-4 video) they won't play in quicktime (Error 2041 code invalid sample description) or Windows player (cannot play the file) they will however open in VLC player but I need them in Adobe Premiere and when I try import it says 'unsupported format or damaged file'. How can I rescue these important videos? I've tried changing the file extension to .m4v and also to .mpeg and this doesn't work. Many thanks in advance for any help

Answer 1

Just renaming the videos does not change their format, you need to do conversion.

Since VLC can read them, you may use it to convert them into another format.

You may find many sources for this. Some that I found are:

• Convert Video File Format using VLC Media Player
• How to Convert Video Using VLC

Answer 2

Just changing the file extension surely won't work. You need to truly change the format by using a video converting tool to convert your videos to other formats that your players and Adobe Premiere can support. If you don't know which video converter to choose, you can try Leawo Video Converter which can support more than 180 formats for conversion.