Question 1

Why are Phantom recovery rates higher than newer DJI drones?

Accepted Answer

Two reasons. First, H.264 is older and simpler than H.265 — carving algorithms are extremely mature. Second, Phantom-era bitrates are lower (60-100 Mbps vs 150-200 Mbps on Mavic 3 / Air 3), which means cards weren't pushed to their write limit. Combined: Phantom recovery typically hits 98% on H.264 .MP4 files even from 5+ year old cards.

Question 2

Can you recover Phantom 4 Pro CinemaDNG raw sequences?

Accepted Answer

Yes. CinemaDNG is one DNG file per frame stored in a sequentially-named folder. AerialRestore recovers each DNG individually. If part of the sequence is corrupt, you lose those frames but everything else is intact. Recovery rate ~95% on full sequences, ~99% per individual frame.

Question 3

What about D-Log color from Phantom 4 Pro?

Accepted Answer

Phantom 4 Pro D-Log is metadata flagged in the H.264 stream — recovery is identical to standard H.264, and the recovered file imports into Resolve / Premiere with D-Log color profile intact.

Question 4

I have an old Phantom 3 Standard / 4K — does AerialRestore work?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Phantom 3 Standard wrote H.264 to internal storage on the camera (no microSD slot on Standard). For Phantom 3 4K / Advanced / Pro, recovery from the microSD works identically.

Question 5

My Phantom 4 Pro card is exFAT and shows 0 bytes — recoverable?

Accepted Answer

Almost certainly yes. exFAT corruption is the most common failure mode on older microSD cards, and the actual data is always still there. AerialRestore ignores the broken filesystem and reads raw clusters directly.

Question 6

Can I recover .DAT flight log files from old Phantom missions?

Accepted Answer

Yes. .DAT files (DJI flight telemetry) recover alongside video files. They're plaintext with some encrypted segments — DatCon and CsvView read them after recovery.

DJI Phantom Footage Recovery — Phantom 4 Pro, 3 Pro/Adv/4K

What to do before recovery

Recovery coverage

Start with a non-destructive scan