I recently shot some footage onto Class 6 Transcend 16GB SDHC cards through a Kensington adapter on my EX3 at an academic seminar. During the shoot, when the cards were full, I would eject them from the camera and transfer them to a Macbook through Sony's Clip Browser software (CRC was on). At the time, all the clips appeared to transfer correctly and the clips showed up and played back in Clip Browser.

I believe one of the cards I used is faulty or has bad sectors on it. Footage from a couple of sessions I shot will not import into Quicktime format. Footage shot on different cards worked perfectly. When I try to convert these raw files from the bad card into editable Quicktime movies I have gotten a number of errors which prevent me from using the footage (this happens when accessing the SDHC card itself and from the backup BPAV folders transferred to hard drive immediately after capture).

Accessing the SDHC card in XDCAM Transfer 2.11, the clip fails to build a preview image and I get the following error message: Failed to import movie from file at Volumes/SDHC CARD 5/BPAV/CLPR 672_1417_02/672_1417_02.MP4(-50)

Upon trying to import the clip using XDCAM Transfer 2.11 I get the following error message: Exception opening XDCAM EX file (Condition Failure - moov existence).

This happened at least two times during the shoot. Once when I transferred and then erased the card after backup (before having any suspicion of the bad card), and then later, where the original footage is still on the card. In both cases, the clips consist of long continuous takes where the camera shifted to the second card slot when the first was full. Footage shot on the continuation cards after the transfer is fine if played independently, though no segment of the entire clip with convert through XCCAM Transfer if Clip Browser has stitched it together including the corrupted sections.

I have attempted to copy the troubled clips in the camera to a blank SDHC card and then import the copied footage and get the same errors. I have also failed to import the same clips through the Log and Transfer plugin in Final Cut Pro 7. Clip Browser also will not convert any of these files to MXF or any other format.

Is there any way to recover the problem clips.

Can you play the files in VLC video player? (you can download it for free)

They exhibit problems in VLC as well with sporadic playback and freezing, but the main issue is converting the raw BPAV folder data into editable Quicktimes

If VLC can play the raw mp4 files, you can use it to convert them to other formats like quicktime.

That why I asked.

Choppy playback in VLC might be due to the speed of your computer.

Opening the problematic MP4 files in VLC results in the following error:

mp4: MP4 plugin discarded (no moov box)

I guess you've already tried to play the cards back in the camera to see if they play properly? Did the camera ever give a 'restore media' message?

I'm just throwing out the obvious questions which others posters here might no doubt ask anyway. Worth a shot.

Hope you sort it somehow...

There were never any Restore Media messages in the camera which obviously made me think the card was OK. The cards transferred through Clip Browser and generated which generated a preview image and stitched together all segments of the clip. Idid not deal with XDCAM Transfer until after the shoot when I started noticing the problems. One of the bad clips is still on the card and there are no warnings when it is in the camera.

Pretty much what happened to me with one card. No error, just a fault when transferring it all.

It turned out that only part of the file had been corrupted. I managed to clip around it in Clip browser.

This left me with 2 mp4 files. Using the Calibrated Software plugin I managed to import these to Final Cut Pro and then cover the missing 2 minutes with my Z1 (which was camera 2).

The entire thing was a chore and the system would throw up a fault if you tried to play or transfer the corrupted section of the file. But with trial and error it was possible to get it all back (barring the corrupted section).

The worrying thing was that with my fault I was recording HDV so datarate shouldn't have been a problem. However something on the Transcend obviously wasn't happy.

However can everyone please take note: I fear stories like this will become increasingly common. I had a chap ring me up today who had experienced exactly the same thing with newer Transcends and his EX1. No fault until the transfer on a long form recording. We keep on saying this, if you bought your Transcends in the latter half of this year onwards, ditch them. Don't tell me "but they were recommended" or "my retailer sold them to me" or "they've been fine so far". We know all this. We also know that what once was a faultless card is known to have problems.

Your experience sounds almost identical to mine. I'm not sure how much of the clips are truly affected but I'll have to salvage what I can. I too had a B camera at the shoot (albeit a PD-150) that fortunately was taking the same sound feed so I should be able to rebuild most of the bad sections.

I didn't realize the amount of problems people were having with the Transcend cards lately when I bought my last one. I had 4 previously, both green and red stripes, and none had failed like the most recent one. I guess I'm having to look for a more reliable brand of card from now on.

Your experience sounds almost identical to mine. I'm not sure how much of the clips are truly affected but I'll have to salvage what I can. I too had a B camera at the shoot (albeit a PD-150) that fortunately was taking the same sound feed so I should be able to rebuild most of the bad sections.

I didn't realize the amount of problems people were having with the Transcend cards lately when I bought my last one. I had 4 previously, both green and red stripes, and none had failed like the most recent one. I guess I'm having to look for a more reliable brand of card from now on.

It's always worth keeping an eye on the forums here to see what peoples experiences are. Sadly many people only visit when they have a problem so don't keep abreast of current developments. I first started to notice problems in September and have been annoying people on here about it ever since. My excuse is that I simply don't want people to have the same problems that I did. It's all entirely avoidable if we get the information out there.

The ATP Pro Max cards seem to be reliable and some people also report success with Sandisk cards (although Sandisk have so many different cards on the market and MxM report not all are reliable).

I've been trying to cut out the good footage from the bad on these corrupted sections and now find that Clip Browser won't even see entire sections of the long take. Entire subfolders within the CLPR folder don't show up (about 4GB each). Ironically, the sections invisible in Clip Browser are seen by XDCAM Transfer but won't build a preview image and can't be converted. I get the following error message:

Failed to import movie from file at.../BPAV/CLPR/672_1410_01/672_1410_01.MP4 (-50)

Anybody else run into situations where Clip Browser won't even recognize footage in a BPAV folder where all the other sections are visible.