A crash during a TS recording costs you 188 bytes
One packet. A transport stream is a chain of fixed 188-byte packets, and a decoder discards a partial one and keeps everything before it.
A crash costs you
One 188-byte packet
Index is written
Continuously
Editable directly
Not without a remux
Drop the recording that will not open
Any MPEG transport stream .ts file, however large.
Nothing is uploaded
The check runs entirely in this tab. Your browser reads a few hundred kilobytes of headers from the start and end of the file and never sends any of it anywhere — you can watch the network tab, or turn off your Wi-Fi and run it again.
What you will get back
- Which container OBS actually wrote, and whether it writes its index as it goes or only at the end.
- How many hours and minutes of footage are still readable, measured from the timestamps inside your file — not estimated from its size.
- The exact command that turns it back into a file you can play, and what that command will and will not recover.
Why MPEG transport stream behaves this way
Transport streams carry live broadcast over links that drop, so resilience is the whole design. Nothing in the file depends on anything that comes later, which makes it the hardest container to damage and the most annoying one to edit.
How to get a playable file back
ffmpeg -i broken.ts -c copy fixed.mp4A straight remux. ffmpeg walks the packets, works out the real duration, and writes an indexed MP4 without re-encoding.
Editing .ts
Editors scrub TS badly or refuse it, because there is no index to seek with. Always remux before cutting.
MPEG transport stream questions
- Is TS really more crash-safe than MKV?
- Marginally, and only in theory. TS loses one 188-byte packet; MKV loses one cluster, usually well under a second. Both survive a crash. MKV is far easier to work with afterwards.
- Why does my editor show the wrong duration for a TS file?
- Because the file does not carry one. The editor is guessing from the bitrate. Remux to MP4 and the real duration gets written.
Stop needing this page
The container decides how much you lose. A second copy decides whether it matters.
WeaverClip records fragmented segments and uploads each one while you are still live, verifying byte count and MD5 before anything leaves your disk. Free holds 10 GB for 30 days without a card.