Tackling interrupted and failed jobs in Magnet Witness
If you’ve ever lost hours of work because a DVR export job crashed or spent your day hunting down failed clips, we know your pain.
That’s why we recently released export recovery features in Magnet Witness that allow you to retry interrupted jobs and failed exports with ease.
These features are all about saving time, reducing manual effort, and making your job easier.
Some all-too-common scenarios
Picture this: you’re exporting a two-terabyte DVR drive, and halfway through, a power failure shuts down your computer and ends the process. Previously, once you were up and running again, that meant starting your export job from scratch again.
Similarly frustrating is when your export job completes with numerous failed clips. To remedy, it meant you would have to hunt and peck through the clip list to locate the failed clips then painstakingly go through the process of trying to export each one again.
Now? We’ve got you covered.
Retry incomplete jobs and failed clips without starting over
With the retry failed clips capability, Witness now remembers where you left off when your export was interrupted. When you reopen the app, you’ll be able to clearly identify which case may have incomplete jobs. Once inside the case, you’ll be able to identify the incomplete job and retry the remaining clips. No wasted hours, no do-overs—just efficiency.
This feature also gives you a one-click option to retry only the failed clips from a completed job. Or easily queue up the whole export job again. No more tedious manual work.
Why DVR drives are more prone to failure and bad data
Curious about why this problem happens so often?
DVR hard drives present unique challenges compared to standard hard drives, making them especially susceptible to encountering bad data during the forensic recovery process. Several factors contribute to this vulnerability and increase the risk of crashes. The most prominent of these include:
- Long term usage: DVR hard drives are most often used for extended periods, which increases the risk of hardware failure and data corruption.
- Harsh environments: DVRs themselves are often exposed to dust, moisture, and heat, accelerating drive degradation and making data loss more likely
Additionally, the following challenges can increase the risk of failures in the lab:
- Large data volumes: As DVR drives have grown rapidly in size, full exports are more prone to interruptions and bad data issues.
- Hardware issues: Avoid routing data through USB hubs, to network storage, or the cloud; save data directly to local drives in the most direct way possible.
- Environmental interruptions: Scheduled automatic updates and power system tests may disrupt workstation operations during extended processes.
Why it matters for video forensics
These enhancements aren’t just convenience, they’re workflow game-changers. By reducing downtime, eliminating manual effort, and surfacing audio insights, Magnet Witness’ export recovery and audio recognition features help forensic examiners work faster, smarter, and with less frustration.
Try Magnet Witness for free
Get a free trial of Magnet Witness today and see for yourself how it can help your video forensics workflows.