64gb sxs cards

[Jim Stamos]

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?

[Phil Murray]

Originally Posted by Jim Stamos

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.

[Dave Sperling]

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.

[Mike Petty]

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

[Dave Sperling]

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.

[Doug Jensen]

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.

[Zoran Vincic]

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...

[Alister Chapman]

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.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Mike Petty

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.)

[Peter Corbett]

Originally Posted by Mike Petty

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.

[John Peterson]

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

John

[Dave Sperling]

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...

[Zoran Vincic]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

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.

[Peter Corbett]

Originally Posted by John Peterson

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.

[Doug Jensen]

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.