Using the EX1R with latest version. Shooting to two ATP 16G Class 6 cards in MXR readers. Before shoot begins, one card is plugged into slot B it and it comes up with 'Restore Media' warning. I execute the Restore and it completes. The show starts and we start recording to slot B. I realize that card in Slot A is not formatted and while camera is recording on slot B I format card in slot A.

Everything seems to be OK. Camera recording, time on Slot B card is counting down from 55 minutes. At end of 55 minutes automatic switch to Slot A card and show finishes on this card.

Back at the studio the SDHC card in Slot A which has the end of the show is fine. The SDHC card that was in Slot B that had the restore message is empty! Nothing. The camera show no clips; windows shows 660MB in the BPAV folder; the Clip Browser doesn't see the card either.

It's as if we recorded for 55 minutes to the Bit Bucket! No indication that it wasn't recording to the card.

I make it a point to always have an SXS card in one slot but in this case I thought what the heck, the SDHC cards have been working for months now we'll just use two SDHC cards.

I pass this along to inform others of the possibility of failure still existing with SDHC and to ask if anyone has any idea why this happened and if I can tell if something was actually recorded or not on the card.

Thanks
Joe Oliverio

My first thought is what on earth were you doing formatting a card in one slot when the other slot was in use? Do you not check your cards before you start? To my mind you shouldn't be performing file operations on another slot when the first slot is recording regardless of the media in use.

As such I don't necessarily think it's a card failure, more likely a write problem caused by you formatting the second slot. I don't know how the USB bus works internally in the EX1 but if the 2 slots are sharing a bus (and therefore bandwidth) you may have your answer right there. The USB data bus was potentially overloaded or disturbed and something has been corrupted in the data stream to the card you were recording to.

You might want to try some data recovery software but I'd suggest that it's quite possible the data is corrupted around the time you started formatting so at the very least you've lost a few seconds of footage.

With the card in the camera what does the time remaining on the card show?
If you put the camera in playback mode what do you see?

Thanks Marcus and Craig,

Well Marcus I guess I shouldn't believe what I read in the manual then. On page 37 it says "You can perform recording or playback using the SXS memory card in the other card slot while formatting is in progress." Now it does say "SXS" card. So maybe 2 SDHC cards are too slow to handle this. Good point.

Craig, I am looking at the cards as they were during the shoot. The card that has nothing on it shows 55 minutes remaining. I will swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw the time counting down and the camera did do an auto switch to Slot A when the B card was full. Or when the camera thought the card was full.

Again, this may have happened at the end of the show when I stopped the camera and shut down. I didn't really look to see what the time readings were when I turned the camera off.

Yes, I shouldn't have waited till the show started to format the card. But you know how it goes when you are on a shoot. You get distracted and then"oops, I forgot to reformat the card!"!

JoeO

When I try to rec review the "empty" card in the B slot, the camera tell me "Cannot Proceed". If that helps any.

I suspect this is a one time happeneing due in part to the restore media message and the formatting while recording. A perfect storm if you will.

Do others use 2 SDHC cards at the same time? Maybe the fact they were Class 6 and not Class10 meant they are too slow to handle something like this? Or maybe the card just went bad hence the restore media message.

JoeO

I always use 2 SDHC cards and haven't ever had a problem.
Would you believe I'm using Class 2 (yes you read that right)? It was a RARE batch from Sandisk that seems to have been around for about 2 weeks in January 2009 or thereabouts,

Formatting might be risky but it shouldn't be deleterious.

That the card shows 55 minutes remaining obviously is not good. That would mean there's nothing to rescue unless a broken directory makes it appear as if the card is empty.

Did you get the restore media while you were formatting the other card?

Restore media usually works but I vaguely remember hearing something about that you can lose the last clip when the message happens.

Don't use Record Review, go into Playback mode although I'm not hopeful given the 55 minute time available on the card.

It sounds like a total card failure to me. I had something similar happen with one of my cards. I shot a 12 minute sequence and right at the end I had an error message telling me to Restore Media. I asked the people to re-inact the whole sequence again (Samburu tribesman showing children how make fire by rubbing sticks together) I switched to another card, no problem. The strange thing was that my card with the error had fully captured everything and I used that clip. I marked the card, so now this one never gets used for any shots, although it works fine in my stills camera.

I know this may not help you, my advice is to bin the card or thoroughly test it before using it again. But be assured that you will never be confident with it.

Thanks Marcus and Craig,

Well Marcus I guess I shouldn't believe what I read in the manual then. On page 37 it says "You can perform recording or playback using the SXS memory card in the other card slot while formatting is in progress." Now it does say "SXS" card. So maybe 2 SDHC cards are too slow to handle this. Good point.


I'm not saying the cards are too slow. What I am saying is that something potentially went wrong with the camera because its possibly not designed to write to two slots at once when using USB. USB can be a little finicky at times and both slots are on the same bus then enough disruption could have occurred to have caused a problem.

You would have been in a very unusual situation where both slots were being written to. Nobody has tested that. The situation with SxS cards is probably different due to the way PCI-Express handles devices.

How old are the MxR cards? I originally started out using these cards in 2009 (had about 5 or 6 of them) but scrapped them as I was unhappy at their performance (poor speed). I believe they have now improved but if you have the older adaptors I would suggest looking at those.

But regardless of what the manual says, regardless of the card used, if you start performing media management tasks on location you are asking for trouble.

Also, do we know what firmware was in use?

Do others use 2 SDHC cards at the same time? Maybe the fact they were Class 6 and not Class10 meant they are too slow to handle something like this? Or maybe the card just went bad hence the restore media message.

JoeO

I think I remember MXM telling me in an email that I shouldn't get a restore media message.
This was with an ATP Card.

I have a few Class 6 ATP Cards and never had any bother with them and I also would have two ATP SDHC cards in the camera at any time.

Nothing against any other adaptors but I only use the MXM adaptor BTW.

Yet another example of why I use SxS cards and have enough of them to never need to reformat on a job.

Coming from an 'old school' tape background I was very cautious about the whole tapeless thing and so I invested in SxS cards and a Nexto DI backup device so I always had multiple copies of shot material asap.

I can't understand the logic of spending thousands on kit and then trying to cut corners on the recording media. Just because you can use SD cards and adaptors doesn't mean you should.

Just my opinion, I know others think differently...

Yet another example of why I use SxS cards and have enough of them to never need to reformat on a job.
...

I used 32GB SXS card at a wedding one time and it let me down when I needed it most.
Fell back to my ATP/MxM combo that worked 100%

I am sure that most EX owners would love to use SxS cards, but Sony's ridiculous pricing has pushed that option out for many. There are many hobbyist who enjoy using their cameras on a casual basis, and the SDHC card option means they can enjoy making videos.

A good quality SDHC card should be more than sufficient for 95% of users. Professional users may want the added security of SxS

Anthony: What went wrong with your SxS card?

Joe, if I were you I would try to use some recovery software to scan the card.

My recommendation would be Zero Assumption Recovery.

If you have any Sandisk cards you probably have their Rescue Pro software.

Anthony: What went wrong with your SxS card?

Hi Alister,

Have a look here.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/486867-sony-32gb-sxs-card-problem.html

All the focus is on the media here but there's no focus on the camera. I remain to be convinced the problem wasn't having both slots in use simultaneously. Due to the way the USB bus works the slots may well be sharing bandwidth. The slightest disruption to the data flow to the slot recording the footage would result in a fault.

It's akin to when I burn discs on my external Blu-Ray burner. I've learnt the hard way that it's remarkably easy to trash a burn process by disrupting the USB bus. Eject an external hard drive or plug in certain devices when burning and you can wave goodbye to your disc. I daresay I could also max out the USB bus as well and cause a failed write.

SxS won't suffer this because it works differently (the same way it's much harder to trip up Firewire devices compared to USB). Potentially the data going across the USB bus has been doubled during the formatting process and some corruption has occurred. While the data rate will be within the USB spec nobody knows what parameters the camera is operating under internally.

I suspect the reason nobody has come across it before is because most would consider it very bad practice to be fiddling with card I/O operations on the camera while it is recording.

I'm still also interested to hear what firmware was in use and what the age of the MxR cards was.

I used 32GB SXS card at a wedding one time and it let me down when I needed it most.
Fell back to my ATP/MxM combo that worked 100%

That's really bad luck Anthony - was it a faulty card or some other issue?

Of course nothing is guaranteed in life, love or electronics :-) but my philosophy is not to knowingly introduce a weak link into the chain - like SD cards. I know SxS are expensive but they should last many years and if you are being paid to do a job it's a reasonable cost over that time period.

That's really bad luck Anthony - was it a faulty card or some other issue?

Of course nothing is guaranteed in life, love or electronics :-) but my philosophy is not to knowingly introduce a weak link into the chain - like SD cards. I know SxS are expensive but they should last many years and if you are being paid to do a job it's a reasonable cost over that time period.

Hard to say for sure Andy but I put it down to the card. I got the card replaced and so far, no problems.

I agree with you about the SxS Cards,

I sincerely apologize to everyone. It turns out it was not a card error, it was an operator error. MINE!.

I thought I shot to 4 cards but both shows were recorded to 3 cards instead. The 4th card is really empty although it did have the restore media message.

So lessons learned:

1. Find a better way to keep track and label cards as they are used.
2. Don't get in a position where you are panicking to deal with cards right before the show starts.
3.It's OK to format one card while recording to another.
4.Wait a few days before posting to the Forum and getting everybody in a tizzy.
5. In this business, develop a fondness for crow because you end up eating it a lot.

Thanks everyone for your concern and ideas for help.

JoeO.

Only glad to hear it all worked out good in the end but still keep an eye on that card with the restore message.
Can you get it replaced?


3.It's OK to format one card while recording to another.
JoeO.

Wouldn't want to do that Joe.
Format all your cards in advance and let the camera just do the recording.
Thats enough for anybody :)

3.It's OK to format one card while recording to another.

It really isn't. There is too much potential for error if wrangling with cards on location.

Say you mix up your cards in your bag. You then insert a new card into the camera. You see its full and just format it without being able to check the contents. You've just erased footage from earlier in the day. When you get home you have a blank card and then start wondering why.

Never perform destructive operations on cards during a shoot. It's too pressurised and one small error could end up costing you dear. This applies to SxS, SDHC, Compact Flash, tape, punch cards or any storage medium. Once your data is gone, it's gone.

Glad you are OK though and am glad we haven't uncovered a potential "gotcha" with SDHC.

Re the Media Restore - Chances are it wasn't cleanly dismounted the last time it was used (camera turned off early or ejected from a computer before it had cleanly dismounted) or has been inserted in a computer that has put extra files on it.

Media restore usually means the EX1 isn't happy with something on the XML side of things or it didn't finishing writing properly during the last operation. If you can't repeat it in testing, don't worry about it.

Not forgetting the usual disclaimer of making sure the camera is on the latest firmware and the adaptors aren't old. Big difference in performance between the adaptors I was buying in 2009 and the latest gen of MxM's I use in 2011. Also big changes with the newer firmware regarding any device connected via USB.

Last weekend on a 3 days event, we used 25 cards: 1 SxS 32GB, 2 ATP 32GB, 4 ATP16G, 1 Patriot 16GB, Transcend 16GB & 32GB and the rest of the cards were Sandisk 16GB. 2 Sandisk 16GB cards were not formatted or deleted prior to the event... so during the shooting I had to format it (record on A or B slot and format on other slot). I was kind of worry but all went thru without any problem (all transfer to computer and work !).

So I can tell you that you can format a SDHC card during shooting with other SDHC card, but only do it when you don't have any choice (Sandisk is Class 4 - Ultra II)

When SDHC card give a warning msg "restore media", I would remove it and test it out later.

I needed one SDHC card to record an event yesterday.

I took an ATP/MXM combo that I had used before and though I'll make another copy of this card before I format it.

When I put the combo into the PC nothing happened.
Repeated this 4/5 times without success.

Couldn't understand this because I copied this card to two other hard drives a few days before.

I then took the ATP card out of the MXM adaptor put it back in and this time the PC did see the card, I was then able to format it to use later that night

So what happened there, was it the card or was it the adapter?

Thanks.

My first thought is what on earth were you doing formatting a card in one slot when the other slot was in use? Do you not check your cards before you start? To my mind you shouldn't be performing file operations on another slot when the first slot is recording regardless of the media in use.



Although Markus is basically right that one shouldn't perform any operations on one card while the other one is being recorded to, I personally did that many times, and never had a single problem. And, I'm talking about the USB cards, not the faster SxS Pro ones!

The first scenario when it happened was recording a very long, uninterrupted event with my nanoFlash on 2x 64GB CF cards (at 50 Mbps, this is several hours recording). Since I always record to the EX internal cards as well, and at that time I only had 16GB SDHC cards in both slots - when one SDHC card filled up and the camera switched to the other one, I'd simple delete all clips from the first card - so that after filling up the other one, the camera could switch back to the first one and continue recording. No problems..

The other scenario was when the "Media needs to be restored" displayed to me (back when I was using the less reliable Sandisk class 4 in MxR adapters), and the camera switched to the other slot. Again I didn't want to interrupt the recording, so - while keeping recording on that other slot - I executed media restore on the offending card. Again, no probs whatsoever.

Recently - with the excellent MxM adapters, and much better ATP Pro cards (class 6 or 10) - the "media needs to be restored" never happens, but I still do sometimes operate on both cards simultaneously (recording to one, doing some house-keeping on the other)...

Piotr