thing I noticed that the pdp_rec~ demo patch writes its file to private/tmp (os x). So i spent yesterday creating away writing to that folder and then found all the mov files gone when I rebooted at home! Should i take it their gone forever and the contents of /private/tmp are deleted on reboot?
yes, but if you're really desperate, and you haven't used your HD too much since, it *might* be possible to get them back with the debugfs program.
debugfs /dev/hda<#>
lsdel
dump <inode#> /path/to/recover/to
I wouldn't be too excited about this though - especially since you're trying to recover binary content. For text-based stuff, I think you can sometimes get some stuff back.
Hope this helps.
-Mike