loving my ex1r, using 16 and 32gb cards. saw the 64gb cards for 679.00. anyone using them without issue. better off buying this than a 32gb at 449.00. do i have to upgrade firmware for 64?

do i have to upgrade firmware for 64?

One of Sony's promotion flyers on their website says that firmware version 1.15 is required for the EX1r.

If you need long record times they're wonderful!
Just make sure your firmware/drivers/software are updated to handle them.
On the oher hand, if you only shoot 20-25GB a day, there's no need.

All well and good to be able to load a 64gig card but if you fill that sucker up you are risking a huge potential data loss when the card fails (and they all fail eventually)

My strategy is more, smaller cards.

Though the cumulative cost may be more, the risk is spread out. If I have 4 16 GB cards and 1 card fails I have only lost 25% of my footage.

I like those odds better that 1 giant 64Gig card folding with everything on it.

MP

Mike,
I used to use smaller cards (before getting some 32's and a 64)
None of my real SxS cards has ever failed.
I also will often run a backup to a NanoFlash.
I have found my workflow for long record times using the big cards so much easier to deal with.
Typical situation - Shoot two 3-hour performances / sessions / whatever in one day. Client wants wmv files posted that night. Using big cards there's no 'combining' that needs to be done - XDcam browser outputs the wmv's - and it's all done in a reasonable timeframe (thanks to FIOS)
The convenience factor makes the cards well worth it for me.

I agree with Dave. Although I own all 8GB and 16GB cards, I would not hesitate to shoot on 32GB or 64GB SxS cards. There is very little risk with putting a lot of eggs in one of those baskets. SD cards might be a different story, but SxS is rock solid.

Guys, you NEVER know when a card will bite you.

About four months ago I lost a whole day worth of footage when a 32Gb SXS card crapped out when I got into the edit bay and plugged it in a Sony SXS reader.

And I've been using 16gb Sandisk Extreme SDHC cards for a year and a half now without a SINGLE problem.

You really never know...

What exactly was the issue with the SxS card. I hope you sent it back to Sony to get your media recovered and a report as to the cause of the problem.

My strategy is more, smaller cards.

Though the cumulative cost may be more, the risk is spread out. If I have 4 16 GB cards and 1 card fails I have only lost 25% of my footage.

I like those odds better that 1 giant 64Gig card folding with everything on it.
Though the risk of any problem with 4 cards is likely to be 4x as great as with 1 card....... Albeit you will only lose a quarter the material, it's more likely to happen, and conceivable that even losing a quarter will effectively lose the shoot.

I suspect the risks of finger trouble when transferring from the card are far greater than any hardware failure. In that case, a single card is likely to be simpler to deal with and hence less likely to have a human error problem.

(Which may also affect any argument re SDHC cards. If the biggest likelihood of failure is human error transferring off the card, best to have a system which means the original recording doesn't have to be formatted until well into the edit - not just to free up space for more recording.)

All well and good to be able to load a 64gig card but if you fill that sucker up you are risking a huge potential data loss when the card fails (and they all fail eventually)
MP

This argument is a nonsense. I use 64gb SxS cards all the time and the capacity and reliability is excellent. 100% failure rate with these cards? Please.

If you need longer recording times, have you considered a hard drive recorder?

John

I hardly think a hard drive would be more reliable than SxS cards.
As I recall, the phrase "it's not whether they will fail, but when" is primarily attributed to hard drives.
Hence the concept of the MTBF rating (mean time between failures)

In my experience:
I have 12 SxS cards of various sizes, using anywhere between 3 and 12 of them a day (~90 days a year) since the EX1 first came out. Total SxS card failures = 0
I also have about 15 portable usb drives shuttling back and forth for client transfers. Typical failure rate = 2 drives per year
14 CF cards for my NanoFlash (2 years) and Stills cameras (6 years). Total failures = 1 card
12 SDHC cards for Stills cameras, GoPro, etc. Failure rate ~ 1 card/year.

The only real way to protect yourself is double recording, whether it be to nanoflash (or other external recorder), or in the case of stills to simultaneously record on a computer (which works great and gives you a client monitor).

Just my experience...

What exactly was the issue with the SxS card. I hope you sent it back to Sony to get your media recovered and a report as to the cause of the problem.

I don't know, the card wasn't mine. It was owned by the company I worked for at the time and it was sent to them to deal with it.

If you need longer recording times, have you considered a hard drive recorder?

John

Yep. I use a Samurai on most shoots as well as the internal SxS card.

How come every time there is a rumor of an SxS card failure, it always turns out that we can't get any more information on it or that it was purely operator error?

I've been using SxS for over 4.5 years now and XDCAM optical for almost 6 years. Never had any kind of failure or glitch of any kind whatsoever.

That is 100% reliablity.

Doug,

I consider them bulletproof (compared to the rest) if my opinion counts. But that's just the experience I had, I certainly don't have a reason to lie or make up horror stories and spread them around. If it had been my card I would be pissed, but it wasn't. It was in a chain of a big production company and it wasn't my buisness to investigate any further.

If you want more details I can only give you what I know. And that is that the card worked fine until it was plugged in to a sony's original SXS usb reader at the end of the day. After that windows was unable to see any file structure on the card and when inserted back to the camera it showed media error with no option to restore. After that it was marked as defective, put in an envelope and sent back to the mothership. And not long after that my relationship with the company ended. But the reminder that no system is really 100% safe stayed with me.

Hi Zoran,

I didn't mean to imply that your story wasn't truthful or that you didn't really experience a legitimate problem. I just find it interesting that every time I hear about a possible SxS problem, it ends in a deadend with no answers when I try to investigate further.

I've been using SxS for over 4.5 years now and XDCAM optical for almost 6 years. Never had any kind of failure or glitch of any kind whatsoever.

That is 100% reliablity.

I run a newsroom with 12 p2 cameras and in the last 5 years we have never had an issue with losing data on cards. I have no concern about it whatsoever. We have however lost far more video than we should due to people being careless and poor media management.

I don't have an extended experience with SxS cards, but I'v worked over 10 years as a press and concert photographer with CF-cards, and during literally over a thousand shootings, I only had one failure. As Murphy dictates, this was a coverage of the start of the Tour de France. Could hardly ask these guys to do it over again for me, could I?

But with a failure rate of 1 in a 1000, I would call solid state media extremely reliable. The only reserve I have is for SD(HC) cards: I find these to flimsy to be trustworthy in a professional working environment.

Just received a notice that there is a Sony sale on 64's and 32's that only the dealer can give you. Call your dealer. I've been using SxS cards since 2007 with only one hiccup on one shoot with a couple of frames in one take in 2008, and I wish I could say that about all those betacam tapes I ran through recorders for 20 years before that! I've never seen such a solid media device.

chris,
went to sony site, not finding the deal. bh has the 32s for 449.00 . is it a better price than that?