308 minute record threshold with HDD

[Paul Newman]

OK, so I'm still testing my battery run Seagate Freeagent 250gb usb drive connected to my EX1 via a homemade trashed Kensington adapter.

So far all my tests reveal a 308 minute max record duration controlled by the EX1 format process of the FAT 32 partition it makes around 80gb.

Today, I'd run about 4 hours onto the drive, and as I was leaving the house, I decided to stop recording, change the camera battery and carry on, whilst I was out - the purpose was to run the system until the battery unit I built for the hard drive ran completely out -
giving me an indication of battery life.

I intended to scrub the 4 hour clip and continue on the same drive, however after switching the camera back on, I found it was offering me 291 minutes of record time.

Assuming some error, I turned off the drive, re connected - same offer - so I put it into record assuming it would crap out after an hour, then went out.

I now have 9 hours of footage on one drive, readable and transfered via Clip Browser, on the timeline all is good - 8 hours and 50 minutes to be exact.

The drive shows a single FAT 32 partition of 78.9 gb - hows this possible? where is the rest of the footage hiding?

Paul

[Paul Newman]

The first 4 hour file is reported as 6gb by Clip Browser, obviously incorrect, and yet it all the duration and code information shows a 4 hour clip.

Edius also reports a 4 hour clip.

Paul

[Barry J. Anwender]

Paul, that is indeed very strange. I've done the same thing using the Corsair SSD, turning the camera off then changing the battery but have not experienced what you are seeing. Also tired every conceivable combination of powering down the SSD, unplugging and then reconnecting, again it behaves as one would expect.

I have noticed that like the SDHC cards, the red light for the ExpressCard slot stays on for a bit until all of the data is written into storage. Is it possible that you powered down the camera before it finished writing all of the data onto the drive?

[Paul Newman]

I went out of record, then powered down, I'm sure I didn't do this too quickly, I use these cameras all the time, also I certainly haven't lost any footage, I've got more than I should theoretically be able to record.

The TAKR file for the first clip shows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <NonRealTimeMeta xmlns="urn:schemas-professionalDisc:nonRealTimeMeta:ver.1.20" xmlns:lib="urn:schemas-professionalDisc:lib:ver.1.20" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" lastUpdate="2009-05-26T10:59:14+01:00">
<TargetMaterial umidRef="060A2B340101010501010D4313000000DA69C83F774905E408004602022A03F6" />
<Duration value="360675" />
- <LtcChangeTable tcFps="25" halfStep="false">
<LtcChange frameCount="0" value="06043212" status="increment" />
<LtcChange frameCount="360674" value="05313216" status="end" />
</LtcChangeTable>
<CreationDate value="2009-05-26T06:58:46+01:00" />
</NonRealTimeMeta>

The duration value is correct, 360675 is indeed the 4 hour clip, but the reported file size by Windows explorer, Clip Browser et Al. at 6,158mb, is obviously wrong.

totally strange - I wonder what the EX1/3 uses as its media data source, is it reported as full because of an xml file, maybe we can fool the camera some way ???

Paul