Stellar recently created buzz with the launch of Stellar Photo Recovery Premium — a software that’s said to redefine the capabilities of conventional data recovery products. Stellar Photo Recovery Premium is a comprehensive multimedia files restoration application.
The software holds special importance for wedding photographers , video editors, and video production agencies who have to deal with thousands of photos and videos of their clients on a daily-basis.
Having said that, there’s already a plethora of multimedia recovery and repair software available, so what sets the Stellar Photo Recovery software apart? And, how much value does this product really offer on the ground?
When running the software on a Windows PC (also available on Mac), it can present 3 different utilities on the screen —
1) Recover Photo, Audio & Video
2) Repair Photo, and
3) Repair Video
Screenshot of the process
Broadly, it retrieves videos and photos shot with DSLRs, camcorders, drones, action cameras, security cameras, mobile phones, etc.
It also claims to restore almost any type and size of media file stored on hard drives, SD cards, USB flash drives, etc, that run a FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS, HFS+, or Linux file system.
The software offers to recover photos, videos, and audio files lost due to deletion, formatting, drive corruption, or virus infection.
Let’s check out the performance of SD card recovery features —
If you try to retrieve 764 media files (both images and videos) lost from a formatted 16 GB SDHC card that was used in any camera, like Nikon D3400.
The process should be simple - plug the memory card into the reader slot, access the card via the software interface, and click Scan.
So, in 3 steps (Select, Scan, Recover) and about 8 minutes later, you should be able to see on-screen the 404 media files —Raw images and videos — recovered. This initial quick scan might not recover all the photos and videos. Therefore, you can toggle over the ‘Deep Scan’ function for a more comprehensive search of the lost files.
Deep Scan can take longer, about an hour more than the default quick scan. However, lets say if you try even with an old and overused SD card, it should be able to recover at least 760 files out of 764.
Though, the Deep Scan is time consuming, it can successfully manage to retrieve almost all the lost files from a formatted camera card.
What could have been an optional feature is that the software can also recover thumbnails of each raw image, which is not necessary. However, you will find that the files will be recovered with the original name, date, and timestamp, which can spare you the time that otherwise would’ve been spent on viewing and sorting the data.
The software lists an array of other features such as select and scan specific file types. Plus, the option to add new ‘custom’ file formats, if your lost file types are not in the default list. Other takeaways for users could be Save Scan Information and Resume Recovery later and Create Image of an entire or specific part of corrupt storage device to prevent further loss of files and recover data from the disk image (and not the hardware).
After testing the software on media files recovery, you can try the challenging photo repair task — with few corrupt (grey bands) JPEG and raw camera files that is usually stored on a computer.
Coming to the procedure, click the Repair Photos button on the main interface and follow the onscreen instructions. Interestingly, it also allows to select multiple files in different formats so that all of them can be repaired together, in one go.
Like the recovery process, the repair action can be completed in 3 steps— Add File, Repair and Save. You can Preview the files after repairing and next save them at chosen location.
Like Deep Scan for recovery, the software features ‘Advance Repair’ for tough cases of JPEG file corruption.
Advanced repair feature requires a sample file – a working JPEG image taken from the same device that captured the corrupt photo. The software repair corruption in the JPEGs, without affecting the sample file.
You can manage to repair and restore raw images, but the software will save the restored files as JPEG (and not as raw format).
Video Repair
The video repair process will be the same as that for photo repair, with a consistent outcome in terms of steps, duration, extent, and scope of repair. It supports several video file formats such as AVI, ASF, WMV, MKV, FLV, DIVX, WEBM, MJPEG, MPEG, AVCHD, MTS, MOV, MP4, M4V, 3G2, 3GP, and F4V videos shot with DSLR, camcorder, and mobile phone etc.
Final verdict
Stellar Photo Recovery Premium is a one-off repair and recovery tool for both Windows and Mac users. Unlike, standalone recovery tools, this software offers a simple and comprehensive solution to restore corrupt, lost, and deleted photos and videos in a wide variety of storage devices and file formats (including raw files).
The GUI is strikingly clean and simple for a software that performs so many different functions.
Wide support for cameras and storage devices, customised scanning, multiple file repair in one go, and single-user license to use all the features make it convenient and all-purpose.
In terms of success rate, Stellar Photo Recovery managed to restore about 99% of our lost photos and videos files from the formatted camera SDHC card. It can also successfully fix the grey bands in the corrupt pictures, particularly the raw files.
Thus, it should address the challenges faced by video editors, web designers, cinematographers, advertising agencies, security agencies who manage CCTV footages, and even vloggers who post videos on YouTube, etc.
The good thing about the software is that it repairs most of the common photo and video formats. A notable advantage is raw image files recovery and repair, which professional users cannot not ignore.
However, on the downside, Deep Scan takes longer time, though it helps to recover most of the files. Further, a constraint with raw image file repair is that the software saves the restored files as JPEG. On the other hand, it is the only software today that repairs corrupt raw images. So, we can forgo it as an acceptable practical feature, and just hope the developer changes this in its future updates.
The free demo version shows preview of the recovered and repaired files, which can be saved by purchasing the license. The Premium edition (single user/system, 1 year license) costs $69. 99 while the Technician edition (three systems, 1 year license) is priced at $149. There is no cap on the usage (unlimited data recovery and repair), and free updates are available. You can also able to find another option for just recovering photos, audios, and video files which was the standard version of the Stellar Photo Recovery Software.
Overall, the Stellar Photo Recovery Premium software meets the expectations of successful recovery, fine repair results of photos and videos, and ease of use but with few hiccups.
. digitalrev.com2019-1-17 03:00