C300: C300MKIII - Delkin CFexpress Card Failure

chris f

chris f

Veteran
Anyone experienced this yet:

Put my 512GB Delkin Power CFexpress card in my C300MKIII and it reads: "Check the data."

Then I go to initialize media and I get the error "Cannot initialize media" (or something like that).

Was on the phone with Delkin customer support and we formatted the card on my Mac running Catalina and then put it back in the camera, but I'm stuck in this endless loop. It seems like maybe there's errors occurring based on the brand of card reader being used? I'm currently using the Prograde reader (after the San Disk one totally wouldn't even mount some San Disk rental cards a while back).

Further background info: I'm pretty sure it's the card that I used as an external hard drive in a pinch - wrote some files from the ATEM Mini Pro to it via the Prograde card reader, but the card continued to work for the next week no problem (both in the camera and when plugged into the computer). I also think that may have been the card that I pulled out of the reader when connected to my computer before ejecting it from the desktop. Gave me the little error message (but I'll admit I've done that dozens and dozens of times with all sorts of cards and drives and never had it cause a problem).


Delkin customer service was solid and they're gonna replace the card, but it has me a little nervous heading into my shoot tomorrow. Dual slot recording AND recording proxies tomorrow for sure.....
 
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Eek, that's no good Chris.

I lost data on a couple of CFast2 cards back when I was shooting C300mk2. Took me a while to pin it on the Lexar readers I was using. Replaced those with Prograde and never had an issue.

Now I'm shooting CFexpress with the C300mk3 I've again invested in Prograde readers. No issues so far (with Sony cards) but I'd be keen to hear if you establish what the issue is. Good luck.
 
lacuna said:
Eek, that's no good Chris.

I lost data on a couple of CFast2 cards back when I was shooting C300mk2. Took me a while to pin it on the Lexar readers I was using. Replaced those with Prograde and never had an issue.

Now I'm shooting CFexpress with the C300mk3 I've again invested in Prograde readers. No issues so far (with Sony cards) but I'd be keen to hear if you establish what the issue is. Good luck.
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Your card reader corrupted your cards?
 
Man, sorry Chris. If your card reader does anything like that, immediately order another one, because chances are, that reader will do it again. I had a read do that, and I thought, eh, I'll keep it as a back up reader, and then one day I used it again, and guess what, yup, it messed up again. Had to run a data recovery program. Glad it wasn't a real gig.
 
Hey Chris. I'm using the same cards as you, but with their own Delkin reader. I haven't encountered any issues yet.
 
ahalpert said:
That's insane. Like, lawsuit time
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Recorded to dual CFast cards. Media looked fine in camera. Inserted one card in FCPX to archive - media was corrupted. I assumed (now I know better) it was either a dud card or an issue with the mac.

Inserted the other card in a different mac (unfortunately using the same reader). Again the directory file was scrambled and I couldn’t recover anything using various repair utilities. The C300mkII couldn’t see anything on the cards anymore either.

Went online at the time and several people were having similar issues with different cameras/ applications/ pcs. We figured out we all had identical models of Lexar card reader. I had three and tossed them in the bin in favour of Progrades and never had another problem.

Unfortunately I had to fly back and reshoot the client at my expense. That wasn’t as bad as appearing incompetent and unprofessional, but fortunately they were very good about it.

If I ever have another card issue I know to use a separate reader for the backup card.

Apparently there was a voltage issue with the readers which would on occasion spike and mess up the directory (I’m not very techie in that area but that was my understanding, something to do with inconsistent power).
 
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Damn guys, this is scary. I think CFExpress is such a new format, the card manfacturers don't quite to see to have their act together with cards and readers it seems.
 
puredrifting said:
Damn guys, this is scary. I think CFExpress is such a new format, the card manufacturers don't quite to see to have their act together with cards and readers it seems.
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Yep, the Delkin rep said as much. My main takeaway is whatever brand card you buy, also buy their card reader. I would hope that card manufacturers test their cards on a lot of different readers, but I would imagine they do most (if not all) of their testing with their own readers so those should be the most reliable.

And still to that point, remember the San Disk fiasco when the C500MKII first started shipping? The cameras came with a free San Disk card, but the first batch of San Disk readers were so unreliable that they wouldn't even read their own card. On my first C500MKII rental, Lensrentals had to overnight Sony cards to me and I had to buy a Prograde card reader on Amazon because when I prepped the cam with approved San Disk media the included San Disk reader wouldn't read the card, even tried the rubber band trick and all - nothing.

For my shoot on Saturday I was a little nervous, but fairly confident everything would be OK cause I was going to use dual slot recording and record proxies to an SD card as an extra back up. When my client was backing up the card at the end of the day I got very nervous when most of the footage wasn't on the card..... Everything worked out as I learned that hard way that when recording in S&F it only writes to one card and most of the day was shot at 60fps via S&F, so all the B-ROLL was on the other card. Definitely was sweating there for a few minutes.

Kinda scary.

Ps. If you're only needing 60fps (and the client doesn't need to watch playback in slo-mo), I'd recommend just recording in 59.97p and slowing down in post as opposed to 60fps in S&F. When you're recording in S&F mode you lose face detection with autofocus and it doesn't record in DGO so you lose some dynamic range and cleanliness in the shadows.
 
chris f said:
Yep, the Delkin rep said as much. My main takeaway is whatever brand card you buy, also buy their card reader.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... not sure if that offers much comfort. In the two confirmed cases of reader error I'm familiar with, it has been card and reader of the same manufacturer.

The CFast cards that my Lexar reader messed up were Lexar cards. And as you mentioned, the first batch of Sandisk CFexpress readers were corrupting Sandisk CFexpress cards. Because I'd heard about that latter case before buying, I decided not to use the free Sandisk CFexpress reader my dealer threw in with the C300mkIII and I'm using Prograde readers with Sandisk cards (so far so good).

My thoughts are record to two cards and if you have trouble with one, always take the reader out of the equation when using the backup card.

chris f said:
Ps. If you're only needing 60fps (and the client doesn't need to watch playback in slo-mo), I'd recommend just recording in 59.97p and slowing down in post as opposed to 60fps in S&F. When you're recording in S&F mode you lose face detection with autofocus and it doesn't record in DGO so you lose some dynamic range and cleanliness in the shadows.
Click to expand...

That's a good point about audio and card backup. Pretty sure you don't lose DGO in S&F though unless you go over 60fps. When I did my initial tests with the camera there was a noticeable bump in noise going from 60 > 75 in S&F mode.

Really keen to hear if you get a definitive answer to the issue you experienced. Thanks Chris.
 
Pretty sure you don't lose DGO in S&F though unless you go over 60fps. When I did my initial tests with the camera there was a noticeable bump in noise going from 60 > 75 in S&F mode.
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Interesting, that's good to know. I was bummed thinking my first real shoot with the cam wasn't using the DGO since the whole spot was 60fps in S&F.


Luckily Delkin's headquarters is only 20 minutes away from me so I'm headed there now to swap out the card, will let you know if I find any new information, but for now I'm gonna buy a Delkin card reader as well just to play it safe.
 
Got my new card today. Delkin’s customer service is top notch.

In talking with Mark today it seems like the error probably was not a result of the Prograde reader, but was from when I accidentally unplugged a dongle from my MacBook that had the card still mounted to the desktop. I always eject my cards before disconnecting but 5% of the time I’ll pull a card out having forgotten to eject it and have never had a problem, but apparently on Mac computers it can be reading and writing to the card in the background even if it looks like it’s idle and if it’s yanked during writing that it can mess the formatting up. (I wonder if it’s updating metadata or even little info like “opened last” time stamps?)

The weird thing was that my Mac would continue to read the card no problem and could even reformat the card using the disk utility, but no matter what I did it would not function inside the camera anymore.

I’m probably going to get a Delkin reader just to play it safe moving forward.
 
chris f said:
Got my new card today. Delkin’s customer service is top notch.

In talking with Mark today it seems like the error probably was not a result of the Prograde reader, but was from when I accidentally unplugged a dongle from my MacBook that had the card still mounted to the desktop. I always eject my cards before disconnecting but 5% of the time I’ll pull a card out having forgotten to eject it and have never had a problem, but apparently on Mac computers it can be reading and writing to the card in the background even if it looks like it’s idle and if it’s yanked during writing that it can mess the formatting up. (I wonder if it’s updating metadata or even little info like “opened last” time stamps?)

The weird thing was that my Mac would continue to read the card no problem and could even reformat the card using the disk utility, but no matter what I did it would not function inside the camera anymore.

I’m probably going to get a Delkin reader just to play it safe moving forward.
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Thanks very much for the update Chris. Relieved to hear the Prograde readers are probably okay as I bought two. I like the fact they have fast SD readers built in.

I've noticed CFexpress cards get very hot in the readers plugged into the Mac, even when everything seems to be idle (haven't experienced this with any other media). I'm starting to eject them as soon as I'm done loading footage for this reason.
 
The problem with Mac OS writing to cards has existed for a long time ... I know many who physically lock SD cards prior to inserting them to
keep the OS from writing to them.

Not possible with CFExpress cards but just noticed that Wise has a reader with a lock switch to prevent any writing to the card ... it can be in
read only which might have prevented the error you experienced.

https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/01/27/wise-cfexpress-card-review/
 
docmoore said:
Not possible with CFExpress cards but just noticed that Wise has a reader with a lock switch to prevent any writing to the card ... it can be in
read only which might have prevented the error you experienced.

https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/01/27/wise-cfexpress-card-review/
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That's really good to know, I wish all the card readers had these switches!

I've noticed CFexpress cards get very hot in the readers plugged into the Mac, even when everything seems to be idle (haven't experienced this with any other media). I'm starting to eject them as soon as I'm done loading footage for this reason.
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This is a really good observation, I often plug a card in and just leave it in until I'm shutting down the computer. I'm going to start doing this practice as well. I just ordered the delkin reader which is mostly made from aluminum and has heat syncs, so hopefully that will help as well - but with offload speeds so fast, there's really no reason to have the card plugged in for more than a handful of minutes anyways.
 
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