9 Ways to Repair MP4 File in 2026 (Online FREE Incl.)

Due to various reasons like data writing error, interrupted file download or transfer, unexpected system crash, virus intervention, or others, you may get a corrupted MP4 file that is not playable, or in lost quality. This blog must be the right place for you to discover effective methods to repair corrupt MP4 files, including several top-ranked online MP4 video repair tools for free to use.

Key Takeaways

• There are many online free video repair tools, but most of them have limits on file size, file quantity. In addition, they often come with a lower success rate, a sample video is always required to fix your MP4 files.
• VLC Player offers 2 options to repair a corrupted MP4 video, with its Fix or Transcode feature, and it is free to use. Also, there are 3 other open source tools to fix MP4 video corruption, including FFmpeg, Untrunc and QuickTime Player on Mac.
• There are professional video repair tools available to fix corrupted MP4 videos, you are recommended to start with the easiest one --- Cisdem Data Recovery.
• Or, you can try some small tips to see if the MP4 file can be played by changing a format, using a different player, etc.

Best App to Repair Corrupted MP4 Video Files 2026

A specialized MP4 video repair application would come in handy as a 100% workable way to fix damaged MP4 video files, being the safest compared with those online repair tools. Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac and Windows is always the top choice of many users.

It has a Video Repair tool, which allows users add a damaged video in MP4, MOV or other popular video formats for quick repair. And it also supports batch repair, you can add dozens of even more videos to be repaired in Cisdem. Even when your video is severely damaged, you can upload a sample video for reference and fix it using Cisdem Data Recovery.

In addition to repairing corrupted MP4 files, this easy-to-use program can recover deleted or lost MP4 files as well. Its users will take little technical knowledge to cope with hard-duty MP4 video file deletion/damage issues.

Why Cisdem Data Recovery?

• Repair corrupted MP4 videos without losing quality and audio
• Support the repair of most video formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, etc.
• Repair corrupted videos with diverse problem: not playing, no sound, flickering, etc.
• Fix severely damaged MP4 videos on camera, hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, etc.
• Repair images and documents as well
• Navigate to wanted MP4 videos quickly using filter and search tools
• Preview repaired files before recovery
• Also recover deleted, formatted, lost and unsaved files in 200+ file types
• Recover data from crashed PC or Mac
• Create disk backup to recover lost file from disk image file when necessary

Here’s how to repair MP4 file using Cisdem on Mac

1. Install and launch this software.
2. Go to Video Repair. 
3. Add all the MP4 videos that you want to repair.
4. Click Repair or Repair all to recover all the corrupted MP4 videos, then view the repaired videos in Finder.
5. If the basic repair mode fails to fix your MP4 file, it means the video might have been badly broken. You click the Repair button and will get the Advanced Repair window to pop up. Then choose Browse to upload a sample video file for increasing the MP4 repair rate.
6. After the sample MP4 video is uploaded, click Start repairing to fix the corrupted MP4 file one more time.

Here’s how to repair MP4 file using Cisdem on Windows

1. Install and open Cisdem Data Recovery on your Windows PC.
2. Select the drive where stores the corrupted MP4 video, click Search for Lost Data.
3. Go to Type > Videos > mp4, find the corrupted MP4 video and click on the play button to preview it. 
4. Then click on the File Repair tool on the bottom of the interface to start the repairing process. 
5. Once ready, preview the file, select it by ticking the checkbox and click Recover to save it to your Windows PC.

Repair MP4 Files Online Free

Free online MP4 video repair tools exist to correct some common errors in can’t-playing MP4 videos and extract video data from the corrupt videos. A major shortcoming is that these websites might only work for minor corruption in MP4 files. If the issue is serious enough, turn to professional video repair software for help. 

Here we have gathered and tested 4 proven free online MP4 repair websites for your reference. Since steps to use these websites are quite similar, step-by-step guide on how to do MP4 video repair online for free will be covered by taking one of these sites as an example.

1# Online Converter

Online Converter helps to extract video data and audio data from damaged videos as much as possible. This tool offers a option to have a reference video, which shall be playable and from the same device as the video to be fixed. Pay attention that the uploaded video files on this site can’t be encrypted or protected.

How to repair broken MP4 video files online free?

1. Open your browser on computer > enter the website: https://www.onlineconverter.com/repair-mp4.
2. Click the first “Choose File” button to select your broken MP4 video.
3. Click the second “Choose File” button to provide a similar MP4 video as a reference. You can also skip this step since it is optional.
4. Click “Convert” button to upload your file.
5. After upload finished, this website will go for another web page to show the repairing result. Remember not to store the generated MP4 video to the original folder or drive for avoiding data overwritten.

Pros:

• Process MP4, MOV, 3GP, M4V video files.
• Support quick fixes for broken MP4 videos.

Cons:

• Users need to provide a video as reference for successful repairing.
• Vexing ads take up a big part of the website interface.

2# Fix Video

Fix Video might be another handful video repair tool online you can choose. It’s claimed that Fix Video can repair corrupt, truncated, unplayable and damaged video files in many common formats including MP4, MOV, M4A, 3GP, RSV, MXF and more. This tool specializes in repairing high definition videos produced by professional cameras, like Canon, Nikon, GoPro, Dashcam, etc.

Pros:

• Support the easy repair of MP4, MOV, M4A, 3GP, MXF, RSV files.
• Repair MP4 videos created by cameras, Android or iOS devices.

Cons:

• If your damaged videos are stored in SD card, you need to first copy them onto the computer and then upload them, instead of directly uploading the videos to this website tool.
• No technical service.

3# Easeus Online Video Repair

Asking for no fees, Easeus Online Video Repair is 100% safe and secure to repair MP4 and MOV videos corrupted during editing, converting, recording, shooting, power outage or transferring. It has the ability to cope with video corruption from any cameras, dash cams and phones.

Pros:

• 3 steps to perform MP4 video repair easily.
• Full automatic video file repair.

Cons:

• The size of corrupted MP4 files limited within 100MB.
• Repiar only 3 videos per day.

4# Repairit Online Video Repair

Developed by the well-known Wondershare Inc., Repairit Online Video Repair will get you covered as a reliable tool for videos with all levels of damage, such as video flickering, video not playing, video having no sound, playback errors, video missing codec, etc. It ensures your MP4 videos enough security by transferring videos via a 2048-bit encrypted connection and deleting them after 3 hours.

Pros:

• Support various video formats: MOV/MP4/M2TS/MKV/MTS/3GP/AVI/FLV/MXF/M4V.
• Fix videos online without damaging their original quality.

Cons：

• Users can only repair 5 videos per day.
• The repaired file size cannot be larger than 3GB.

Four More Tools to Repair Corrupted MP4 Video for Free

Moreover, this part will separately dig out another 5 free repair options. They are not guaranteed to be completely safe or feasible, but are worth a shot to some extent.

Method 1: Repair MP4 video files free with VLC Media Player

VLC media player is an open-source, portable platform and streaming media server. It is designed with in-built video repair options for fixing broken MP4 videos. VLC is available both for desktop operating systems and mobile devices. That is to say, using VLC media player has a chance to solve the frequently asked problems: how to fixed corrupted MP4 video files in Android/Windows 10/11. There’re 2 options to achieve MP4 video file repair using VLC media player. Just see below for the detailed instructions.

Option 1. Use Always fix feature (on Mac)

1. Make a copy of your damaged MP4 video file in a different folder and rename it with the “.avi” extension.
2. Open VLC > click on its name from the top menu bar > select Preferences.
3. Choose “Input/Codecs” option on the System Preferences interface.
4. Go to Codecs/Muxers section. From the “Repair AVI Files” option, select “Always fix”. Then click “Save” button.
5. Open and play your renamed AVI video file with VLC, to check if this method repairs the corrupted MP4 file successfully.

Option 2. Transcode MP4 file (on Windows)

1. Open VLC > Media tab > Convert/Save.
2. Choose Add to import the MP4 file to be repaired > click on Convert/Save button.
3. From Profile, click the spanner icon.
4. Select the format you prefer under Encapsulation > go to Save button.
5. Click Browse to choose your destination path > hit Start. VLC will create a new file if your damaged MP4 video can be fixed. Otherwise it will show an error message.

Method 2: Fix MP4 video free using FFmpeg and recover_mp4

Both FFmpeg and recover_mp4 are free tools, which can be combined to recover corrupt MP4 video files. The principle is to extract the video and audio stream of the damaged MP4 file and then bundle the streams to a fixed MP4 file. This method is relatively complicated. Let’s walk through the steps specifically.

1. Prepare your corrupt file as well as a known good file.
2. Download recover_mp4 by visiting https://www.videohelp.com/software?d=recover_mp4_192.zip.
3. Download FFmpeg by visiting https://www.videohelp.com/software/ffmpeg.
4. Extract these two ZIP folders > drag the ffmpeg files from the bin folder to recover_mp4 folder.
5. Copy your corrupted and good video files into the folder as well.
6. Rename the corrupt file bad.MP4 and the good file good.MP4 to help simplify things.
7. Open Command Prompt by opening Start menu and typing CMD.
8. Right-click on the folder > click Copy address.
9. In CMD, type cd (space) > press Control+V to paste the folder location > hit Enter.
10. To extract missing data from your good file, type recover_mp4.exe good.mp4 --analyze > hit Enter.
11. When this is done, open up WordPad > copy and paste this ffmpeg command which will be used later.
12. Copy the above recover_mp4 command > replace “corrupted_file” with your corrupted video’s file name (in this case: bad.mp4) > hit Enter. This will extract the video and audio from your corrupt MP4 file.

13. Two new files will appear in the folder, one video and one audio stream.

14. To combine these streams and get a non-corrupt MP4 file, copy the ffmpeg command from WordPad > paste it in CMD > press Enter.

15. When the process completes, there should be a new file named result.mp4 in the folder. That’s a playable MP4 recovered from your corrupted video.

Method 3: Fix corrupted MP4 video free on Windows by Untrunc

Those who are experienced have given the feedback that Untrunc performs well to fix a corrupt MP4 video file with no limitation. Compatible only with Windows operating system, Untrunc is a free and open-source video repairer, said to work incredibly fast and be pretty simple to use. Let’s see if it can work for your case.

1. Download Untrunc on your Windows PC.
2. Extract the downloaded archiver.
3. Open the folder to choose untrunc-gui.exe. This will launch Untrunc app.
4. In Repair section, click “reference file” button to select a working MP4 video, and click “truncated file” to upload the MP4 file that needs to be repaired.
5. Select Repair to detect and fix any corruption issues in your corrupted MP4 video.
6. Finally go to play the video to check if it’s repaired successfully.

Method 4: Repair MP4 file free on Mac by QuickTime

QuickTime is a media player built in macOS system that allows users to play, edit, stream or encode MP4/MOV video files. It can be used to check corrupted MP4 files at the same time. If your video is unplayable on QuickTime, try this method as follows to repair it.

1. Open the MP4 file with QuickTime on your Mac.
2. Click on Windows tab from the top menu bar > select “Show Movie Inspector”.
3. Like below, a windows describing the detailed information of your MP4 video will pop up.
4. If corrupted or damaged, your MP4 will be displayed as a black screen.
5. Choose Edit tab from the QuickTime menu on the top.
6. Click on Preferences > QuickTime Preferences > Update button.
7. Restart the QuickTime player to see if your MP4 file can be played normally.

Small Tips to Repair MP4 File

Actually, there are some tips that might fix your corrupted MP4 files practically, because sometimes, it is not the issue in the file itself, it may be caused by the device or player that you use to play the video.

1. Change video to another format. Corruption often happens in the container structure, rather than the encoded video. Convert the video to another format, will change the container, which will extract and repackage the video into a fresh and well organized structure. And finally, fix the corruption. You are recommended to use an online free video converter such as Zamzar to change the video format.
2. Use another video player. Outdated or problematic video player might be not able to play a video properly. Check for updates, or switch to a new but good-ranking video player to play the video again.
3. Use another device. Insufficient device storage or poorly-performed device causes the corruption as well. You can clean up your device, also you can play the video on another device to check if the issue persists.
4. Edit the video first, then export as MP4. If you have installed a video editor on your machine, loading the video in it will re-analyze the entire file, create new timecode, which might help fix the corruption.

Final Words

In this blog we have discussed 9 top picks altogether to recover corrupted MP4 video files, among which Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac and Windows is the most suitable software to fix MP4 corruption in a simple manner and protect your private MP4 data from leakage. If you want to start with an online free MP4 video repair tool, we've picked 4 for you, they are safe to use.