Hello to all. I was shooting today with 2 16 gig SanDisc SxS cards today with my Sony EX1 and about the 40 minute mark, the recording suddenly stopped. A message said "Unkown Media Change" I switched to the b slot and continued to record.

After shooting I checked to play back the A card to see if the thumbnail was there and the camera will not allow playback or camera modes and all I get is the error message.

I reset all to try and clear the camera if it were the problem and it looks like it's the card. I'm told it is probably the controller that went out.

I will have to send it in to Sandisc to replace the controller bacause I cannot transfer the BPAV folder via the camera usb as nothing happens. I sure hope this is card can be saved and retrieved. Any suggestions....

Joel Brooks
MIT Video

Wow! I'm guessing Sony/Sandisk don't want the public to hear about this issue. I assumed that these SxS cards were like any memory card. They are supposedly very durable. Shocking! (sorry that you're having to deal with this)

Out of curiousity.....did you format the card after each use? Or did you just Delete All Clips? I'm wondering if the data got corrupt somehow. Maybe we can all learn something from this.

Again, I'm sorry. It really sucks when this type of thing happens. (I lost our edit room hard drive years ago.....with no backup)

Maybe MxR with SDHC cards are more reliable!

Your scary scenario started me thinking how to have belt and suspenders insurance - recording the same date to each of the slots to insure an immediate backup. Using two sxs cards, or an sxs and an sdhc would make for great peace of mind on the important, one of a kind career killer moments.
Any idea if such a thing would be possible?

JVC HM 700 with optional SxS adaptor allows recording to SxS and SDHC simultaneously. Nothing like that for EX yet that I know of.

I've had EX1 since Dec 2007 and never had a problem with SxS (Sony) or my Sandisk SDHC cards (Jan 2009) though.

Good Luck Joel!!!!

Lou Bruno

So much for the argument that says "you get what you pay for." Even the top dollar stuff is fallible, which comes as no surprise. It's not fun when it happens, especially on a paying project.

Joel

Sorry to hear of your trouble. Hope you can get it resolved.

Was this one continous recording, 40 minutes long?

Thanks guys.

I always reformat the cards vs delete. The 40 minute mark is the only clip on the card.

Sandisk will replace the card because it is still under warranty. I am waiting for a tech guy from Sandisc to contact me regarding restoring the clip on the card. I sure hope it works or else I have lost a $564.00 job. This is not a common failure. I still love my Ex1.
I do believe in prayer....

Joel Brooks
MIT Video

So there's nothing else you can think of that could have caused this? You didn't drop the card off a 6-story building the week before? Or run it through the washing machine by accident? Anything?

This is very disturbing..... But I guess it's good to keep it in perspective that so far only one card has failed out of how many cards currently being used. (crossing my fingers)

Did you try copying the material with a computer instead of the camera?

The MacBook Pro and other computers have an Express 34 slot that works. I've been able to do that when a card gave me a similar error.

The card seems to work just fine now. Don't know what caused the "Unknown Media" error to appear. It was a Sony SxS card, too.

I do not have access to a laptop right now with the proper drivers installed however, I should be hearing from the level 2 technician from Sandisc tomorrow or early this coming week to see about overnighting the card to him for clip restoring. I am hoping that it works. I am told by Sony that it is very likely that the footage is still there. I will keep everyone posted. Thanks to all for the input.

Joel Brooks
MIT Video Productions

I had this same problem with a 16GB Sony SXS card. I contacted them today - they will try and retrieve the media.

Just last week we started getting a "Media Full" warning, even though the 16 gig card was no where near full. I transferred the BPAV files to a hard drive with a Sony card reader. There was only 3GB of information on the card. But the card mounted, the media played back - no problems. Went back the next day - inserted the card - formatted the media and again got a Media Full warning, not very far into recording on this card. However, this time, when I put it into the card reader - the red light just flashed - it did not mount on the desktop - when I put it back into the camera I get an "unknown media" error. Everything is grayed out - I cannot reformat the cards or anything. I'll find out in several days if the media can be retrieved... in the mean time - how did your issue turn out? Was Sandisk able to recover your media?

Joel,
The same happened to me; I lost 3 cards during one wedding due to same error! The cards were in two data recovery firms and they were not able to recover anything; they suspect that processor on the card is damaged; you mentioned that you will send them to sandisc to replace the chip - did you contact anybody from Sandisk if yes could you please provide me some contact info so I can arrange doing same thing with mine.