How to find corrupt or unplayable video files in bulk

Big video collections hide broken files. A copy to a NAS was interrupted, an old external drive developed bad sectors, a camera card was pulled out too early, or an export crashed halfway. The file still shows up in File Explorer with a normal size, so nothing looks wrong until you double-click it and the player shows an error, freezes or stops partway through.

Checking files one by one isn't practical when you have thousands. This guide shows a free way to scan a whole folder tree with FFmpeg and PowerShell, how to read the results, and how SceneSort Pro does the same check from a menu.

What "corrupt" usually means for video

• Truncated files. The copy stopped early. For MP4 and MOV this is often fatal, because the index that players need (the moov atom) is commonly written at the end. A typical error is "moov atom not found".
• Damaged data in the middle. The file opens, but decoding fails at some point: green blocks, frozen frames or a sudden stop.
• Zero-byte or placeholder files left behind by failed copies or cloud sync.
• Wrong or missing extension, so Windows tries to open the file with the wrong app. This one is easy to fix once you find it.

Method 1: A quick header check with FFprobe (free)

FFmpeg is free and includes ffprobe, which reads a file's header and reports problems in a fraction of a second. Install FFmpeg (the Windows builds linked from the official site are fine) and make sure ffprobe -version works in a terminal.

Then open PowerShell in the folder you want to check and run:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File -Include *.mp4,*.mkv,*.mov,*.avi,*.m4v,*.wmv |
  ForEach-Object {
    $err = & ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of csv=p=0 "$($_.FullName)" 2>&1
    if ($LASTEXITCODE -ne 0 -or $err -match 'error|invalid|not found') {
      [pscustomobject]@{ File = $_.FullName; Problem = ($err | Out-String).Trim() }
    }
  } | Export-Csv broken-videos.csv -NoTypeInformation

Open broken-videos.csv in Excel. Every row is a file that ffprobe couldn't read cleanly, with the reason. This pass is fast, but it only checks that the file opens. It won't catch damage in the middle of a file whose header is fine.

Method 2: A full decode check with FFmpeg (free, slower)

To be thorough, have FFmpeg decode every frame without writing any output. Any decoding error is printed:

ffmpeg -v error -i "D:\Video\example.mp4" -f null -

No output means the file decoded cleanly. To run it over a folder and log only the problem files:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File -Include *.mp4,*.mkv,*.mov |
  ForEach-Object {
    $log = & ffmpeg -v error -i "$($_.FullName)" -f null - 2>&1
    if ($log) { "$($_.FullName)`n$($log | Out-String)" | Add-Content decode-errors.txt }
  }

Be aware that this decodes every second of every video, so it takes roughly as long as your CPU needs to process the footage. For a large library, run it overnight on one folder at a time. Add -hwaccel auto before -i to use your graphics card if FFmpeg supports it on your system.

Reading the results

Don't delete in a hurry. A file that fails in one player sometimes plays in another, and a partly damaged home video may still be worth keeping. Move problem files to a separate folder first and decide later.

Method 3: Point and click with SceneSort Pro

If you'd rather not run scripts, SceneSort Pro has a Corrupt File Scan built in. It's part of the same app you'd use to organise a big, messy media library, so it works on everything you've already added, including external drives and NAS shares. FFprobe is bundled, so there's nothing to install.

1. Add your folders and run a scan so the files are in your library.
2. Open Corrupt File Scan in the left-hand menu, choose the scan depth (a quick check or a deeper decode), then click Start Scan.
3. The results list each file that doesn't open or decode cleanly, with its folder, size and the reason reported.
4. Double-click a row to try playing the file yourself before you decide.
5. Tick the files you're sure about and click Delete Ticked. Deleted files go to the Recycle Bin, and Undo is available.

While you're there, it's worth running the duplicate finder too. A broken file often has a healthy copy somewhere else in your collection, and the duplicate view is how you'll find it.

How to stop it happening again

• Verify big copies. Robocopy's /V switch reports skipped files, and tools like TeraCopy can verify each file after copying.
• Use "Safely remove" before unplugging drives and camera cards.
• Check disk health. If broken files cluster on one drive, check that drive's SMART status with a free tool such as CrystalDiskInfo, and copy its contents off soon.
• Re-scan every few months, especially after moving the collection to a new drive.

More guides: start with how to organise a big, messy video collection on Windows; how to find duplicate videos with different resolutions; dupeGuru vs Czkawka vs SceneSort Pro; all video library guides.