Lost videos

Natalie trusted me to take several videos she had left on her phone for some time and post them on YouTube. The hard part is getting them off the phone. She did that. She handed me the thumb drive with her memories on it. I put the device to my computer and pulled the files off. I brought up the software to convert them to something I can edit and upload. I hit convert.

The progress bars went way too fast. The computer did not chug nearly as hard as I thought it should. I just knew something was wrong.

When I reviewed what I had done I found that I had selected the wrong kind of file to convert the videos to. I over wrote the files that Nat gave me. They were gone. Only the first picture of each video still existed, there to mock me.

What happened is the software opened each file, read the first little bit, converted it in memory, then wrote it to the drive. upon writing to the drive, the rest of the file was obliterated, never to return. Had I copied the files off the USB drive, I would have a backup. Had I selected a different output folder, changed the names, didn't work on the originals, they would be around.

I had every opportunity not to screw it up. I'm sorry Natalie. I've failed you.