Hi

I was about to purchase a Canon XA25. I read in the manual online that you have to power the camera completely off when removing a card from the camera and inserting a new card into the camera. We record sporting events where we have to change cards very quickly between events. I currently use Sony nx5u cameras. As long as the light for the card is green I can pop a card out and put a new one in Quickly without powering down.

I saw this as a warning in the xa25 manual. Does anyone have any experience with this?

The Canon XA25 have 2 SD (SDXC) slots. When one is full, goes to the second card and it continues recording.
SDXC cards, for video, are 32 Gigas, 64 and 128.

With a pair or 64 gigas (128 gigas) you can record, more or less, 6 hours at AVCHD 28mbps, 50p. 5 hours at MP4 35mbps, 50p... on every card. At last, 12 hours or 10 hours of full HD at 50p.

Double it with 128 SD cards.
Or if you want a backup, two 128 gigas SDXC are the best option. Two cards records the same but... if I don't remember bad, it only works with 25p.

Mikel,

Sorry I must have missed your reply.

I understand what you are saying ,but its not what we are doing.

We record sports events, that are about 10 to 15 mins long at a competition. We need to take the cards out quickly and send them to our sales booth, and then shoot the next event. This happens every 10 to 15 mins all day long. We have about 40 cards and are constantly changing them out.

Thanks
Robert

Robert

I just took my XA20 and shot a test clip. Stopped record and slide open the CD card cover. Camera warned "Accessing the memory card. Do n to remove the memory card". Next screen was "Memory card cover open". When that screen disappeared, I removed the card from slot "A" and popped it into my Mac. Clip was there. Did not power the camera down. Took about 6 secs for the camera to finish writing before the second screen came and went.

Hope this helps. I'm sure other users will weigh in as well.

Reed

How much time do you have between shots?

A quick test with my XA20.on how long it takes to change an SDHC card the "manual" way.
I recorded about 15 seconds of random video so there was a real recorded open file to close.
Paused recording
Started timer and turned camcorder off.
Waited for "wait warning" to clear
Opened sliding card cover
Removed & replaced the SDHC card with one that already had some video recorded on it
Closed sliding card cover
Powered on camcorder
Waited for "record pause" ready light
Checked timer

It took just under 20 seconds for my aging hands to do it.

It would be good to initialize/format the cards in advance.

Thanks guys for your help.

I purchased the camera and did a few tests. It seems as long as the camera is not accessing the card its ok to take the card out. I just waited for the warning to go away, which was just a few seconds. We have about 2 mins between events.

I think it will work fine for me. I just got spoiled with my NX5u's. If the light is read, don't take the card out. If its green you can take it out.

Thanks
Rob