HVR MRC1 - CF card not being read by card reader.
 

Being new to tapeless aquisition Im wondering why I cant simply insert my CF card from my sony HVR-MRC1k into my card reader built into my pc. It doesn't seem to detect the card.
The only way that works for me is to transfer the files from the unit itself into my pc.

Is this normal?

No. You should be able to mount it like any other drive and drag&drop the files like any other files. If you reformat it though, it must be done in the MRC1 - DON'T format it on the PC as it won't get the control data that the MRC1 needs on the card in order to function correctly.

I just want to add to the above statement.

In my excitement to test out the MRCK I recorded some stuff on a CF card, transferred it to my computer, and deleted the files on my PC. You shouldn't do this, but all is not lost if you do.

Once I inserted the card back into the unit, it did not read the card and I thought I'd just screwed up a brand new card. But even though the card goes unrecognized you still get the option to reformat it to the standards the the MRCK needs.

yea and it says in the manual not to delete those little 1kb accompanying files either.

I wonder why my cards arent being read by any outside cf reader.
I've tried both cards I have on 2 different readers and 2 different pc's.
Nothing happens when i insert card.

Having to use the unit to transfer the files from it to the pc is a bit of an inconvenience.

...I'm going to take a stab at your question if you don't mind. You know those 0kb files on the CF card this device formats ? One of those files is a boot log control dummy file which tells the media to *boot* up an OS when it is started in the CF recording device. I do believe there is a basic sort of OS (operating System) which boots from an internal EPROM chip in the CF recorder and places a swap file and other temp files onto the CF media (Like any other HDD in a computer would), and when you format the CF media using a different OS (such as Windows), then those control files get erased and the internal OS is not loaded, thus, it cannot read or write to the media.

If you delete all the clips on the MRC unit using the menu on the unit ii self does it delete those little 1kb files as well?

Stelios