'Spot check' - PMW-F5 with XQD 240GB cards

[Grant Peacock]

Hi everyone,

I hope your week is busy and productive. We're on Day 2 tomorrow of LONG interviews, principal camera is my F5, and I just discovered that my client is carrying around Sony 240GB XQD cards. I run the 120GB version cards thru an ExpressCard adaptor, and have had no issues. It's tempting to deploy the 240GB versions tomorrow, to cut down the number of times I have to bust out with DIT move. (I still don't enjoy swapping roles on site, and believe the money should be allocated to a dedicated data wrangling role... never mind).

What is your experience? Is this a safe prospect? I'm aware that it's possible to put too much on one card, either because it is not supported through camera specs, or simply because of the 'eggs in one basket' risk. I have also not tried taking my camera to firmware version 9.20 (still at 9.00) because I have one of 'those' serial numbers. It SHOULD be okay to do the update, but I keep re-reading Sony's guidance.... hmmm. I sure would hate to disable my camera just by going for that very last update.

Thoughts?

[Grug]

You need to be on v9.20, but also triple confirm the exact 240GB model they have is compatible.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one 240GB model (I had a pair of them with my F55) and it’s fine, and it’s the 256GB models that had some variations and some of them weren’t compatible (but I’m not 100% sure).

but check the v9.20 documentation - it lists the compatible cards.

[Run&Gun]

Presuming you’re shooting 1080/23.98, that’s around 5 hours. I hope ya’ll aren’t rolling through until the card fills up…

That being said, I have two days of long interviews, myself, starting tomorrow. I ran into the audio guy in the hotel lobby earlier and he said they typically go about 1:45 each. And we have five tomorrow and, I think, seven the next day.

[Doug Jensen]

Regarding too many eggs in one basket, I have never had an XQD or SxS card fail. Not a single lost frame. 13 years with SxS and probably 6 years with XQD, so I wouldn't be worried about data loss if you have proper protocols on place. As for off-loading, use ShotPut Pro and offload to two drives simultaneously. Rock solid workflow with error correction and very fast. I once worked on a 30-day documentary where I had to offload an average of 1 TB worth of footage every night in a different hotel room -- and I never lost a frame.

[Grant Peacock]

Thanks much, all. I am still circling around the issue of whether it is a safe bet to try upgrading my F5 to v9.20 firmware, or not. 'Mixed messages' when I read Sony's documentation against my serial #. But Friday night is a good time to give it a spin.

We were filming in 4K, so the 240GB is not actually excessive. What IS excessive is some of the workloads I just read right here - that's a truly industrial flow of data!