AC160 AC160 SDXC Card Corruption

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ScoutSports

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I had a strange thing happen.

2 nights ago I began editing some game footage and preparing a multicam cilp in FCPX. Footage game from 3 AC160's, all shot on almost new, formatted, 64 GB SDXC cards. We use the simul record to that we always have a back up.

I needed 1 clip ( #4 of 4) so I imported it with no problems.

Yesterday, one of my workers took the same card into FCPX on another machine to import more footage. When he did, the import screen froze. It would only show clip #1 as ready to import and was preparing to import the others. It would crash FCP when you tried to import the 1 clip.

We tried the other card as well. The same thing happened.

I immediately took 1 card back to the AC160 to see if it was a camera issue and the camera prompted me to repair, so I did. This deleted all 4 files on the SDXC card. Oops.

From what I am hearing, it sounds like during the reading/import of the cards on the other machine, it may have written back to the cards somehow and scrambled the footage. When I put both cards into the original machine that read the 1st card with no problems, it does the same thing. Causes a crash when it tried to read the files.

On the card that was deleted by the camera, I am currently recovering the files from the AVVCAM SD Card File Recover V1.2 from Panasonic.

That card still shows 11 MTS Files when I open the card on the computer. I am hoping it will restore the card somehow, but at best I believe it will only bring it back to the point where FCPX apparently created the corruption.

On the other card, it actually doesn't show a "Private" folder. When I open the card, it shows the DCIM and MISC folders and then has a white page with the Quicktime logo on it. When I double click the QT logo, it opens a folder with 4 videos. It will actually play 3 of the videos, however, it will not play them correctly. There is stoppage and scrambling at points. But there is footage there, I just can't get any program to recognize this footage.

I used the AVVCAM restore tool from Panasonic on this card, and it wiped out all but one of the files. The file that it left was 1 second long. I did create a back up of the card to my desktop and external HD before altering the original card again.

On the same card, I completed the AVCCAM recovery and it created a file that is 1 second long, but is 45 GB. which would be the size of the game footage. So it looks like it recovered the files, but doesn't provide any access to them.

I am lost here and would love to have someone help out (pay someone if we need to) to point me in the right direction.

It's strange that I can play these files in QT player, but I don't know how to get them out. It's frustrating to see the footage you need playing in QT, but I can't get them into FCPX any way.

What are my options?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide or point me in the right direction.

thanks!

Mark Mulvany
 
I have new info. While on the phone with Apple, I restart my computer to see that there are lines on the bottom of the screen, so it appears that the graphics card is the reason that both cards were scrambled and spit out with different resulting file structure.

So, is my best option to find someone who can manually piece these back together?

Recovery found all the footage, but only about 25% of it plays.

Is there a MTS editor that allows you to edit the file structure?

BrandonT said:
I have used the free version of this to recover data from crashed laptop HDDs. I don't know if it'll work for you or not.

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/

For the future, I'd say ALWAYS set the switch on the card to read-only mode.
Click to expand...
 
That stinks. Do you remember if the card was locked or not? I would think it wouldn't do that if it was. I had never done that until I read Barry's book on the AF100. Now I always lock the card before putting it in the computer.

If I understand you correctly, you have the working .mts files? Just the file structure is bad? If so, you can edit the .mts files natively with some editing platforms. Premiere will do it and you can get the 30 day free trial.
 
I dumped some new footage into FCPX tonight, and the cards were definitely locked this time around! Thanks for the tip on that.

I was able to retrieve most of the footage that I was missing on the cards.

It is interesting how it happened though.

After the AC160 couldn't repair the files on Card A , it deleted the files. Nothing was ever done to those files after being deleted. I was certain this card was lost forever.

On Card B, I ran the Panasonic Restore software and it basically wiped out 3 of the 4 files.

So, I decided to run the Panasonic AVCCAM SD File Recovery on Card A and after a few hours it was able to recover 22 different MTS files. I did the same on Card B, but it didn't return any results.

I'm not sure what to call it, but it would show my DCIM and MISC Folders, but below those was a white page with the Quicktime logo on it. When I opened that file, it brought up a folder with 4 files in it that would play off and on. Like it was stuck in QT forever.

On Card A after I had the 22 MTS files I was then able to use Handbrake to convert these files to MP4's. It did return a few minutes that was just audio etc., but no big deal really considering we have footage we can use now.

It basically broke up my 1 - 90 minute clip into 4 segments, but that'll be perfectly fine, considering we left the office yesterday thinking it was lost.

If my cards would have been locked when they were put into the iMac, then none of this would have happened.

I think I will go and download Premiere and begin learning to natively edit MTS files for the future.

Thanks for the suggestions and help Brandon.
 
What brand of 64 GB SDXC card did this happen with ?

I have found the PNY 64 GB Professional X Series Class 10 SDXC to be a reliable and rugged performer, despite its affordable price. Not one single problem so far.
 
I recently started connecting the camera to a USB port to avoid dismounting/remounting the cards.

You get a menu, one option of which is PC (something like that) and then from the PC, I copy the entire structure to a newly created directory.

if you do this after coming in from the field, install a fully-charged battery. You would not want to have the camera shut down whilst doing a data copy.
 
Scan Disk Ultra. 64gb SDXC 30 MB/sec class 10.

I don't believe it was a card issue, as it appears the graphics card in the 2011 27" iMac caused the cards to scramble.

I wonder if this is possible:

FCPX has graphics card issue during import that caused card to be rewritten. When I put the duplicate card in, with the exact same data if FCPX would have rewritten that card to duplicate the one it just had rewritten?

I say this b/c I notice that FCPX loads a card it has previously seen faster than one that has never been in the card slot. When I put in the back up card, perhaps the cache saved properties for the card and then rewrote it to copy the card it had just corrupted.
 
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