Well our new EX1R + SxS hung me out to dry today - first shoot. I'd done some testing a week ago, filming around 20mins back then without prob. Today as a confidence check I recorded a few clips while the event was setting-up - again no probs.

Just before proceedings start I thought using cache recording might be useful, while I'm changing cache settings times and moving between cache on/off in the menus the camera freezes - can't change anything, when I turn the camera OFF it ignores me, stubbornly remaining on. In a panic with minutes to go, I remove the battery to power down.

Short while later I start recording ok, then after maybe 3-5 minutes I get a msg "error media A" or similar. (definitely not a restore media msg). I press REC, maybe 30s later it stops again with error, I switch to slot B, and it again goes into stand-by mode. Panic stricken at a live event, I run to a nearby room to grab a Z5P we had set up for voxpops. Sheesh what waste, I was all plugged into the house sound, but had to handhold with a shotgun as proceedings underway could not miss the main presentation.

I had a 16GB Sony SxS in A, 32Gb SxS in B, genuine Sony batt, and Bebob zoom controller.

30 mins later in the editing suite I could not get the camera to reproduce the fault, bebob or no bebob, a slot, b slot, stop start, let it roll to batt flat. Sheesh it's frustrating as I was responsible for recommending this solid state workflow and we didn't skimp i.e. 32GB SxS, PHU-120R, PXU-MS240 etc.

Mark, is it possible you powered down when one of the cards was still recording? Or despite the freeze maybe they were "frozen", if you like, in record mode in terms of what the camera was sensing, causing some sort of corruption. In that case you would need to reformat the cards. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, I know the feeling well when things like that happen at live events, the diagnostic pressure's on, and also you probably wanted to keep what you'd shot earlier anyway.

I'm pretty sure I was messing withe cache mode while in stand-by (I'd assumed these could only be changed when not recording) so forced power down was likely in standby-mode.

For a few hours I was totally at a loss, but coming home tonight to post, I recall the lock-up issue, at first I didn't link the two, but given cam seems ok now, in hindsight I should just have calmly powered down and restarted (which is all that happened between the event and testing later). The main event was in swing so I wasn't calm!

Mark,

I think we all empathize with you. Why is it always just before you are going to press the record button that Murphy's Law happens?

Can you clarify just what you think happened and why you think it wasn't the camera? Sounds like you were in standby when you shutdown. But maybe the card hadn't gone to green yet?

Thanks,

Mark,
Can you clarify just what you think happened and why you think it wasn't the camera? Sounds like you were in standby when you shutdown. But maybe the card hadn't gone to green yet?

Well I think it was the camera - the freeze during my changing cache settings while in stand-by mode was immediately before I began recording after I forced it to shut down by removing the battery. I never looked at the SxS lights - I wasn't recording so never thought to check. How cache ON affect things - essentially cam is recording live to buffer - does this change the status of the SxS even if one is not actually 'recording to SxS'?

I looked at the three clips I managed to record, one was spanned across SxS - all three clips were exactly the same length 30.07 or 30.09 seconds (I can't recall exactly now). Evidently not 3-5 mins, but 30s when failures appeared - I knew it wasn't long - lucky I guess it didn't appear in the middle of main speech or unveiling. Phew!

Also all the subsequent recording has been successful on these two cards WITHOUT any deleting or re-formatting. I also never formatted the cards in cam before use - straight out packaging they were ready to use.