Evidence & investigations · deleted CCTV footage
Every deleted-footage case is a race against the recorder's own loop. Win it, and video comes back — often with its timestamps. Lose it, and no lab on earth can help, whatever their website says. This page is the honest version of both outcomes.
Talk it through, in confidence
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| The situation | What it means | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Clips deleted from the recorder's app or menu | Index entries removed; video likely still on disk | Stop recording immediately |
| Drive formatted by the recorder or an installer | New index written over surviving video streams | Carving territory — hopeful |
| Recorder kept recording after the incident | The loop has been eating oldest footage since | Every hour matters now |
| The incident window predates the loop length | Likely overwritten — we check honestly before quoting | Free assessment, straight answer |
| Recovered clips play but show no timestamp | Carved footage without its index labels | Normal — and disclosed up front |
| Clips recovered elsewhere won't play | Raw streams exported without proper reassembly | We rebuild them into standard files |
Your device is logged with its own case reference the moment it arrives. An engineer assesses the fault, confirms what's actually recoverable, and you get a fixed price in writing — no diagnosis fee, no obligation, and no paid work until you say go.
Recording stops, the drive comes out, and a read-only image is taken. From this point the loop can't take anything else.
The recorder's proprietary structures are parsed on the image — where they survive, footage is restored with original timestamps and channel labels, ready for evidential use.
Where the index is damaged or gone, raw video frames are carved from the disk and reassembled into playable files — with honest labelling of what carries original time data and what doesn't.
Before you pay the recovery fee you approve a full listing of what came back. Your data returns on new media with free return postage, and the case only closes once you've confirmed everything opens on your side.
The one-line physics: loop recording overwrites oldest footage first, continuously, without regard to what it shows — so the recoverability of any deleted clip is a function of exactly one thing: how much new video was recorded after it. Stopping the recorder is not a precaution; it is the recovery.
A staff member cleared 'old clips' that included a theft. The recorder was stopped the same afternoon — the decision that saved the case. Index remnants restored four of the five deleted days with timestamps; the fifth came back by carving, playable but unlabelled.
Often — deletion removes the recorder's index entries while the video itself stays on disk until the loop overwrites it. Stop the recorder and the odds are good.
Because the original bytes have been physically replaced by new video. There's no residue to read — claims otherwise are marketing, not engineering.
If the recorder's index survives, yes. If recovery has to fall back to carving raw frames, footage returns playable but may lose its original time and channel labels — we tell you which is which.
Anywhere from days to a month-plus depending on cameras, resolution and disk size. Busy multi-camera systems loop fastest — assume urgency until the recorder is stopped.
Loops overwrite, artefacts age, deadlines pass. Open a case first — the scoping conversation is free and confidential either way.