5D3 stopped recording with card full but last clip missing

[Nigel Barker]

While I was shooting at a wedding on Friday recording stopped with a 'Card Full' message. The card in question is a Transcend 400X 32GB Compact Flash card. I came to review my footage today & discovered that in fact there is 2GB free on the card & that the last clip is missing. I know that the clip is missing as the last file on this card is NPB_4626.MOV & the first file on the next card is NPB_4628.MOV. I recalled exactly the card filling as I was doing a guest interview & I congratulated the interviewee on completing their message just before the card filled (I was watching the countdown from 999 images remaining).

There are 39 .MOV files on the card varying in size from 17MB up to 4GB. There are a couple of clips that are spanned i.e. they require a larger file than 4GB & the clip has spilled over to another file. The missing clip was not a spanned file.

I have tried SanDisk Rescue Pro recovery software& it finds 41 files. The last one has a preview image that is of the missing clip & analysing with MediaInfo Mac it is an MPEG-4 video file 10mn 23s in duration so it looks like the file that I am looking for. Unfortunately it is only 352KB in size when viewed in Finder.

I am guessing that either the card itself has a problem & the file is corrupt or that the 5D3 has a problem & that it did not close the last file & update the directory correctly. Either way I would like to get the file even if it is incomplete.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Matt Lawrence]

I think you're on the right track with data recovery software. Does't the SanDisk application have an option to copy that file to your computer's hard drive? Or did you already do that (couldn't tell from your post)? The Finder is likely to read it incorrectly since it looks like the file is missing critical directory info, but the data itself could still be there on the card. I haven't used SanDisk but I've used other utilities on the Mac Like Data Rescue that will sometimes recover files like this.

I'm hoping that this was a card error and not something with the 5D3. Once you get everything off the card, I would write zeros to it using Apple's Disk Utility (format to MS-DOS). This will disable any bad sectors. Then reformat in the camera. Then test the camera so that it has to switch cards while recording video.

Good luck.

[Benoit Joossen]

Hi,

Footage of your last clip has been written on the card and can be recovered.
You should not write to the card until the clip is recovered, otherwise the clip could be lost forever.

I suggest that you use "DeepMediaScan" functionality of Treasured app to find the missing footage on the card.
Launch DeepMediaScan with menu Disk > Open damaged disk...
You will need to provide a "good file" recorded with the same settings. Then Treasured can extract the raw data corresponding to this clip, and a video repair tool can be applied to recover the clip.

Treasured:
Treasured • Tool for Video Diagnostic and Repair

Regards,
BJ

[Nigel Barker]

I tried Treasured but it doesn't help as it detected no media which seemed odd as there are 39 .MOV files that are undamaged & playable varying in size from 17.2MB to 4.28GB which are present & undamaged. It doesn't find any of these files that definitely are present it does says that it found a Linear PCM audio file 1467MB in size. There are no preview images in iPhoto just about 10 images labelled Linear PCM audio & about 200 images labelled No Media.

Finder tells me that the disk is 32.01GB with 29.5GB used & 2.51GB free (which is where the lost file resides). Nothing has been written to the card since it was removed from the camera. The normal Canon 5D directory structure contains the files NPB_4588.MOV to NPB_4626.MOV. The next card that I filmed on starts with NPB_4628.MOV so the file that is missing is named NPB_4627.MOV

Perhaps I am doing something wrong with Treasured? While I am sure that it is a very ingenious piece of software I find has a very unintuitive interface. I took the default slice size of 300MB & pointed it at the smallest good file to use as a pattern. I am now trying with the smallest slice size 100MB which it estimates will take 8 hours on my 8-core Mac Pro.

[Benoit Joossen]

Hello, Nigel

Canon 5D Mk III is a new camera and as of today, Treasured is not capable of detecting it.
That's why DeepMediaScan only detects Linear PCM audio but not H264 video.

We have worked on a patch to solve this and an unofficial Treasured release is now available here:
http://public.me.com/getclockworks
file name: Treasured-with-MkIII.zip
(note that it's not intended to be used unless you want to detect Mk III footage, and this link is temporary)

With this Treasured, we have check that you can preview MkIII 720p and 1080p. Footage recorded in All-I-frames mode don't need a good file, but the rest of recording modes need one.

Therefore, please retry DeepMediaScan with this new version. Slices don't need to be so small. With 300MB slices you should now see all your footage.

Please use our contact email for support from now on. (This forum is not intended for that)

Regards,
BJ

[Kris Koster]

It's happened to me too with my 5D mark III on my last commercial project. Card was full and I lost the last clip. It's weird - Sometimes it saves the clip under such conditions and the odd time it doesn't. Never had this problem with the mark II.

[Craig Terott]

I have more confidence in SD cards for video. Class 10 is plenty fast enough. CF is not as reliable with is multitude of pins. I tested my mkIII battery run-out while recording, card full, I even popped the lens off while recording. The camera produced a good final video file on the SD card each time without fail. SD is the way to go.

[Nigel Barker]

That's a good point about the pins but I would have thought that it's the reader that is more likely to get damaged than the card. I have always thought probably irrationally that CF cards were more robust than SD because of the metal casing. They are larger so less likely to get lost but the main advantage is that even though SD may be plenty fast enough to record video on the read speed of a decent CF card is two or three times higher than even a Class 10 SD card so it is far quicker to dump the video files off the card.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Kris Koster

It's happened to me too with my 5D mark III on my last commercial project. Card was full and I lost the last clip. It's weird - Sometimes it saves the clip under such conditions and the odd time it doesn't. Never had this problem with the mark II.

I have never seen this with a 5D2 either in the 3+ years that I have been using them. It looks like it's a camera problem then which Canon should be able to fix in a firmware update. It is rather worrying though especially as there is no good way of estimating how much recording time is left on a card.

[Drew Long]

The only problem with SDHC cards on the 5D3 is that UHS-1 isn't supported so there seems to be a ceiling of 22MB/s when writing onto SDHC cards Plenty fast enough for All-I but not great for stills at high fps.

But it's good in a way since SDXC/HC cards of 64+GB are cheaper than the CF variants.

[Bill Grant]

My assistant was shooting with the Mk3 last night during the ceremony. Shot onto a CF card. Memory ran out, card and clip are there and fine. Not sure what that proves or says. But it happened.
Bill