Hi,

Ive been shooting some seminars lately that go for around 2 hours.

My work flow is follows, 2 - 8GB Cards Mac Book Pro with 1TB external.

I record at 1080 25P so get around 28mins a card.

Heres my problem.

First card is full, i switch slots, this is ok as i pull it out the full card and put it in my mac and use xdcam transfer to unwrap it.

When I have transferred it to my mac i put the card back in my EX1, at this point still full.

When the second card gets full I am switching slots then frantically fumbling through the menu to delete all clips so i can continue recording on the previous card.

Each subsequent card change follows the same process.

Is there something i am missing, can i delete the card using xdcam transfer?

Cause i dont think you can delete a card if the slot hasnt been chosen while you are still recording on the other card / slot.

Im sure others have come across this...

Any guidance, advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Dustin Gray

Dustin, can't you use one of your Video Out connections and go straight out to your Mac?

Using the pc i delete after transfer and check using clip browser, so therefore i put an empty card back into slot a.

Well i used to do this, now i just carry a load of sdhc cards, no more offloading on location.

Paul.

Can't you just to go "my computer" select the "Removable Disk" slot the card is assigned to and go in and delete everything manually? Works with every other kind of card I've tried.

Why not delete the clips while the card is still in your Mac? Verify the transfer, then delete the clips, and put the card back in the camera. Done.

However, if you are going to keep shooting long seminars, I would suggest a couple courses of action.

1. Purchase a Firestore. I have an FS-4 Pro HD. While I can only record at HDV levels, I get about 336 minutes of recording time.

2. Switch over to recording on SDHC cards. The methodology is here on the forum using a Kennsington 7-in-1 expresscard adapter, and MUCH cheaper SDHC cards. When the 32GB cards are released, you can use 2 of those to record the entire seminar.

Can't you just to go "my computer" select the "Removable Disk" slot the card is assigned to and go in and delete everything manually? Works with every other kind of card I've tried.

I think, you must delete with clip browser (on a pc anyway), if you delete using windows then when the card goes back into the cam it needs to be reformatted or restored (can't remember which), so this won't help Dustin's workflow.

Paul.

You could use ShotPut Express which will copy the files and format the card (if you want) as well as eject it from your Mac.

That's what I use and it works great.

I think, you must delete with clip browser (on a pc anyway), if you delete using windows then when the card goes back into the cam it needs to be reformatted or restored (can't remember which), so this won't help Dustin's workflow.

Paul.

You are fine deleting the BPAV-folder using your computer. If the camera wants to restore the card - just let it.

You are fine deleting the BPAV-folder using your computer. If the camera wants to restore the card - just let it.

Thanks everyone for your advise, its great to learn from those out in the field already doing it.

Ok, Im a little nervous doing this as I mucked around with the file contents of a card once before (was on a pc), and the EX1 would no longer recognize it, came up with some error code.

I eventually got it to work through trial and error of trying to mount it different ways through both clip browser and xdcam transfer and have been shy to even touch the card ever since as i thought id almost blown $800 AUD.

So you recommend to just trash the BPAV folder, eject the card and the put it back in the EX1?

I guess the camera will ask you to restore the media???

If this is what people are doing regularly then I will do it.

Cheers

Dustin

Ditto on ShotPut software (I'm on PC side.)

It also allows to *verify* the data offloaded, before formatting the card. (and, you can offload up to 3 different locations simultaneously, making data backups in real time.) Peace of mind...

Ditto on ShotPut software (I'm on PC side.)

It also allows to *verify* the data offloaded, before formatting the card. (and, you can offload up to 3 different locations simultaneously, making data backups in real time.) Peace of mind...

hmm... that does sound reasurring, im always double and triple checking to make sure ive got the data, closing my eyes and hoping im deleting the right card when i put it back in the slot.

Sounds like it might solve a few of my issues in one hit.

I will see if they have an OSX version.

Cheers

Dustin

Suggestion 1:

Once you've verified that your media is on your laptop and backed up version 2 if you feel secure doing this, put the SxS card back into the camera and re format it whilst recording -why wait until the second card is full? It's quite safe, the camera only offers you the option to format the card that is not busy recording.


Suggestion 2:

Buy 2 Kensington Express card readers and 4 Sandisk 16gb Ultra II 15mbs cards, seminars after this are no problem - 58mins of HQ per card or 80 mins in SP - costs about £150 for the lot.


Paul

I use a MacBook Pro's Express card slot for the SxS and after I copy my BPAV to my external drive, I make sure it's all there and then delete the BPAV off the SxS then eject and put back in the Camera and no format or anything needed. Just works great!!!

Suggestion 1:

Once you've verified that your media is on your laptop and backed up version 2 if you feel secure doing this, put the SxS card back into the camera and re format it whilst recording -why wait until the second card is full? It's quite safe, the camera only offers you the option to format the card that is not busy recording.


Suggestion 2:

Buy 2 Kensington Express card readers and 4 Sandisk 16gb Ultra II 15mbs cards, seminars after this are no problem - 58mins of HQ per card or 80 mins in SP - costs about £150 for the lot.


Paul I too use the above method. Never had a problem. Just eject the SxS card from your laptop. Place it back in the camera, reformat the card. Just did this on a 2 day shoot. The shoot involved many interviews. Hardware i had at my disposal, 1- 17 inch Macpro laptop. 1- 500 gig Lacie external drive. 4- 8 gig SxS Sony cards.

As you can see there's a few ways to handle this.

First though I'd recommend using ClipBrowser and copying and NOT using XDCAM Transfer directly from card. Do that and you've lost your BPAV masters. Those MOV files will ONLY work in FCP thereby severely limiting their portability (or you'll have to buy that new product I heard about).

You can delete the clips from SXS in ClipBrowser. In my experience if you delete BPAV from finder you may get a Restore Media command. Another post seems to say otherwise though. My understanding is that the camera still expects the folder structure so deleting folders would trigger a Restore Media command or so I thought. That's also why if you name/rename the SXS card you'll get the Restore Media command the next time you insert the card. Changing the name apparently impacts how the camera views the path to the folders.

You can actually Reformat one card in camera while the other card is recording, if you happen to put back a full card in. You can't delete clips in camera on one card while the other is recording though.

I really need to get MY head wrapped around this workflow too. I had a boardroom meeting to shoot last week and it was 2:05 of continuous recording. I had 4 SxS 8 gig cards and rotated through all 4 of them. I was alternating between using the Finder (on a Mac) to simply drag the BPAV folders into my pre-made shoot folders numbered consecutively OR using ShotPut.

Since this was a shoot with a (mostly) locked-down camera, I had time between card swaps to "play" and was also using Shotput to ingest the same cards. I didn't realize that Shotput was automatically joining the "split" clips for me. At first, I thought that I had lost some of my footage until I found one folder with the entire two-hour session joined together. However, one thing that I still haven't been able to understand is how to prevent SP from renaming my cards when it wipes them clean. I have each card with a consecutive letter name (Card_A, Card_B, etc.) but I hate the fact that I have to manually enter the name again....or am I missing a checkbox somewhere? I'd like SP to get the card ready for the camera so that I don't have the dreaded "Restore Media" warning in case I'm cutting it a little too close to the card-swap time.

Do NOT use finder! Don't take a crap shoot with your camera masters.
Use ShotPut or ClipBrowser2.

I regularly do shoots running 2-4 hours.
Copy with Clip Browser.
Delete Clips with ClipBrowser (or reformat card in camera which you can do while other card is recording).
Safe repetitive so your brain follows a SAFE work pattern.

I just use clipbrowser to copy files and delete them aftewards on the sxs card - then the SxS card is ready to be put back into the camera without troubles - no formating and not too much touching the camera when rercording.
---- Bo

What exactly are you deleting? The entire BPAV folder or one of the folders/files inside it?

I'm just deleting the files in ClipBrowser. That way the folder structure isn't touched and you don't get the Restore Media.

Suggestion 1:

Once you've verified that your media is on your laptop and backed up version 2 if you feel secure doing this, put the SxS card back into the camera and re format it whilst recording -why wait until the second card is full? It's quite safe, the camera only offers you the option to format the card that is not busy recording.

I second Paul's method. I've done this many times when recording event that I offload to my Mac while shooting. The formatting thing is scary the first few times but it doesn't interrupt the recording on the card you aren't formatting. I've done this and had one continuous clip for a few hours using this method.

However, in the future, I'm going to use SDHC cards with the Kensington if I can. To me this method is much less error-prone and efficient than offloading to your computer. I now have the ability to shoot 4 hours without having to offload. When I get the Sandisk Ultra II 32GB (on backorder now) that will go up to 6 hours. Offloading to a computer in the field while shooting is a huge distraction, especially if you don't have an assistant.

I just don't know why you go to all this drama.

We do many dance concerts, mainly two camera shoots, between now and Xmas, and two weeks ago had the unfortunate experience, during a long concert with no interval, of having to plug the laptop and Sony card reader intoa a powerpoint in a large old theatre using a powerpoint across at the side of ther hall.

You guessed it, lock off wide camera, fight through 50 schoolkids sitting in the dress circle, start the transfer, go back ten minutes later to find "unknown error", panic, do it again, worked with 5 minutes recording to spare!

Yesterday I went out and bought two 32 gig cards, bringing total recording time to over 5 hours with each camera. Yes, it cost me AUD $3,200, a lot of money, but really, it's ONE job, and I can use these cards for the next 5 years or until I retire!!!

Really, it's less than using tape over the same time!

The joy of coming home, loading the cards, and seeing I have 320 minutes of SD recording time in my viewfinder was just mindblowing.

You can keep your cheap recording solutions, with the door staying open etc, I think they will probably end up being false economy in the long run.

My 2 cents ......(down 30% against the US$ in a week-LOL)!

Cheers Vaughan

Vaughan blinked.

From my testing, with the SDHC cards and my EX3, I would definitely just use a variety of 16 or 32 gb cards. And, on the EX3, the door closes! If not overcranking, it is identical to using SxS of the same size, minus all the expense, of course!

I have a question about this workflow - I have plenty of sxs cards, so, using them, but recording continously - when the camera switches from one card to the next, is there a problem with stitching the clips together? This will hapen multiple times, as the idea is a continous shot lasting about 3 hours. I'll end up going through 3 or 4 16gb cards and don't want to ever stop recording at all. Can you just copy the clips and stitch them in final cut?

Thanks,
John

I just don't know why you go to all this drama.

You can keep your cheap recording solutions, with the door staying open etc, I think they will probably end up being false economy in the long run.

My 2 cents ......(down 30% against the US$ in a week-LOL)!

Cheers Vaughan

Vaughan, in my opinion, you are correct. If I were in your situation with continual paying big gigs I'd simply get a bunch of SxS cards. No fuss, bother risk and the door closes. However the EX1, though a wonderful camera, capable of achieving results, perhaps better in some cases than $50K cameras, is in the 'prosumer' price range. There is a resistance to paying as much for the media as the camera. It raises the barrier to effective entry. So one person's drama is another person's 'I can get the same result for $5,000 less, and invest that in other peripherals.'

I have a question about this workflow - I have plenty of sxs cards, so, using them, but recording continously - when the camera switches from one card to the next, is there a problem with stitching the clips together? This will hapen multiple times, as the idea is a continous shot lasting about 3 hours. I'll end up going through 3 or 4 16gb cards and don't want to ever stop recording at all. Can you just copy the clips and stitch them in final cut?

Thanks,
John

John, with the XDCam transfer software, if you add all the clips from various separate BPAV on different cards, the partial clips will show up with a .smi extension. Then when you 'import' the clips (in my case since I use a Mac) to .mov files, they get automatically joined into one large QT file. Those can them be added to the FCP browser, they are valid QT files. It works remarkably well but isn't obvious or intuitive when you're initially doing it.

....and ShotPut was joining them automatically without me even knowing it!

Keith,

Thanks for the reply. That's what I thought, but wanted confirmation.

John

What exactly are you deleting? The entire BPAV folder or one of the folders/files inside it?

Hi - I am just deleting the clips in the clipbrowser - click the window open with SxS clips. press ctrl A and then delete and thje card is ready again for a new recording..