Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
In bizarre series of events I have lost files on an XQD CARD .
I need RECOVERY .
Ideas ?
HELP !
I need RECOVERY .
Ideas ?
HELP !
FS7: FS7 XQD needs RECOVERY HELP!
- Thread starter Lenilenapi
- Start date
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
What can you see when it is plugged into a computer?
Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
It is quite a long story Morgan, and I am only on an iPhone and driving so it would be too hard to tell the whole story. Somehow in the transfer of the second card of the day information from the first card and seems to have gotten transferred into the second card. In the Macintosh finder the second card appears identical to the first car however catalyst browse sees no files on the second card. Likewise no thumbnails show up in the camera on the second card. When looked at on a PC catalyst browse she's identical files on the first card and the second card. I'm not sure how because I didn't do it and it was done by someone much more used to PCs. However at this point there's no doubt the car needs recovery from an expert or from expert software. I'm driving and have been dictating this into the phone I hope it's readable I have no time to check it
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morgan_moore
Major Contributor
Well I can't really help beyond suggesting that of the files are there, visible, and the folder structure is kaput the Im sure you would be able to view In resolve.
if the cards are formatted you need more expert help but all is probably not lost
if the cards are formatted you need more expert help but all is probably not lost
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
.. I'm sure you are aware there are various card recovery softwares on line - most are free to download and get a report and then cost to do the actual recovery ?
Viddovation
Veteran
Having some difficulty following your exact situation. That said: if you have card that shows a file structure in Finder but does not show up properly in the camera, Catalyst Browse, or Content Browser, your footage is not necessarily lost - it may just be corrupted.
The folder structure of the cards is very important and stores not only the video files themselves but an extensive amount of metadata. It's a collection of files that reference each other, and if a single file gets corrupted it could cause Sony's cameras and software to reject the entire card.
Having a DIT mistakenly attempt to access the cards files from Finder and not via Catalyst Browse or Content Browse is a very easy way to end up with corrupted file structure.
Tracking down where a folder structure is corrupt can be timeconsuming and difficult. However, if the video files exist in the file structure, you can access them directly and save them, and perform any encode required.
If the files you require have been deleted and emptied from the trash, recovery is likely much more difficult.
If you have an official Sony card (not a Lexar), and have not written any new data to the card (or at least, not a full overwrite), sending the card to Sony may be your best route for a erased/formatted card. I don't know who you talk to or the procedure or cost, but apparently Sony has some in-house methods for deep recovery of the cards. The Lexars are incompatible because they lack an error checking feature the Sony cards have, or so I've been told.
The folder structure of the cards is very important and stores not only the video files themselves but an extensive amount of metadata. It's a collection of files that reference each other, and if a single file gets corrupted it could cause Sony's cameras and software to reject the entire card.
Having a DIT mistakenly attempt to access the cards files from Finder and not via Catalyst Browse or Content Browse is a very easy way to end up with corrupted file structure.
Tracking down where a folder structure is corrupt can be timeconsuming and difficult. However, if the video files exist in the file structure, you can access them directly and save them, and perform any encode required.
If the files you require have been deleted and emptied from the trash, recovery is likely much more difficult.
If you have an official Sony card (not a Lexar), and have not written any new data to the card (or at least, not a full overwrite), sending the card to Sony may be your best route for a erased/formatted card. I don't know who you talk to or the procedure or cost, but apparently Sony has some in-house methods for deep recovery of the cards. The Lexars are incompatible because they lack an error checking feature the Sony cards have, or so I've been told.
This is the worrisome part to me. There is only so much space on the card, and if you're seeing files in Finder (and they are identical to Card 1), there is a real chance that the files you hope to recover were overwritten. Is there a chance that both cards were plugged in at once, and someone dragged Card 1 onto Card 2's Finder window? Or that they accidentally copied Card 1 from your backup drive to the Card 2 that was plugged into the computer?
Either way, files being overwritten can be extremely hard or impossible to get back.
Wasn't there also a thread here,or the Sony site about cards not swapping .. although the VF was saying the 2nd card was hot.. it was actually still recording to card 1.. Im sure I read that recently.. and someone else had had a similar problem.. even more scary than just a down load screw up..
Found it.. on the Sony site
Shooting a network piece this week using Lexar 64GB 1333 cards. Shot b-roll on card A switched to card B for interview. As I'm rolling on interview, record light is on and indicating I'm recording on card B. As the interview went on I noticed the counter for card B was staying on 66 minutes and not going down as you would expect though it was highlighted just like it was the card recording.
Stopped the interview much to the angst of all, explained the problem and swapped out cards to Sony 128 GB cards. Checked the card that was in the B slot after the interview and there was nothing on it. After transferring all cards I was reviewing footage and the part of the interview I thought I missed was actually the last file recorded on the A card. Most weird!
I can tell you for sure that in the future I'll simultaneously record on both cards! At least I learned something!
Shooting a network piece this week using Lexar 64GB 1333 cards. Shot b-roll on card A switched to card B for interview. As I'm rolling on interview, record light is on and indicating I'm recording on card B. As the interview went on I noticed the counter for card B was staying on 66 minutes and not going down as you would expect though it was highlighted just like it was the card recording.
Stopped the interview much to the angst of all, explained the problem and swapped out cards to Sony 128 GB cards. Checked the card that was in the B slot after the interview and there was nothing on it. After transferring all cards I was reviewing footage and the part of the interview I thought I missed was actually the last file recorded on the A card. Most weird!
I can tell you for sure that in the future I'll simultaneously record on both cards! At least I learned something!
Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
As suggested above I am hoping that the files are still on the card and are salvageable and have not been overwritten, I have written Juan Martinez directly and posted to the Sony Community Forum because I do remember hearing that Sony has ways to save information from corrupted cards. The second card in particular had plenty of room on it. Fortunately it is not extremely important footage, but we were hired to shoot it. I don't know if what happened is clear from my raving above while in the car. Now that I'm home here goes a second try in excruciating detail. The following is every step I followed .
1- I shot on 2 @ 128G Sony XQD cards . one in the AM (47 G) and a second after lunch only about 30 min. We used the Finder to drag & drop XDROOT to a folder on the clients hard drive. Never have had a problem with drag & drop for many years but maybe I've been too Cavalier and that is the source of problem.
2- Anyway 1st card copied fine and client thought he had copied the 2nd card fine also, but i don't know how carefully he looked at the files. We were in a rush (always dangerous) . At end of 2nd transfer I noticed the Mac ( on battery ) said power was low so I moved everything to a table with AC for the Mac as I intended to copy both cards again to a backup drive.
3- When I put the 2nd card in to copy for backup(drag & drop) there was an error message saying the card was unreadable . So I first ejected and reinserted. This time no error message , so I began drag & drop but the transfer stopped in an instant and read only 30.5 MB on the new folder. I started to get worried.
4 - So I inserted card into FS7. Error message said the card needed to be repaired so I said OK .The repair seemed to go OK, but when I looked at the thumbnails there were no files there. I returned to the computer to try drag & drop again but the same same thing happened - 30.5 MB.
5. I tried to read the card in Catalyst Browse but while it showed the XDROOT folder, it didn't see any files inside.
6. NOW it gets bizarre - OK I'm having trouble but this is just a backup after all, So I returned to the first copy on drive 1 to make sure it copied properly the first time. At least we'll have one good copy.However while 2 folders labelled card 1 and card 2 are on the first drive (each containing an XDROOT folder- I call these "virtual cards") , card 2 appears to be an exact copy of Card 1 - 46.5GB. It also has exactly the same mxf #'s and file sizes.
7. Furthermore if I look at these 2 "virtual cards" on my Mac laptop using Catalyst Browse, I cannot see any video files in "Card 2" -so it is not an exact copy after all.
8. Confusing us more - Using a PC Catalyst browse however does see video files on Card 2 and they are same as Card 1.
9. I go back to my Mac and examine the file structure of the 2nd ( corrupted) XQD card and while it has the same file names as Card 1 - they all have small identically sized files in them.
So it looks like Card 1 has somehow put information into Card 2 and corrupted it . It may simply be a directory issue or something else I know nothing about.
Re how this happened I am not sure and of course I don't want it to happen again. My typical workflow is on a mac to copy the XDRoot folder from the XQD card to a folder on clients drive using the finder - thus making wager I call what I have always called a "virtual card" . From that copy of the card I do any work withy catalyst browse to break into Pr Res or whatever. Perhaps I have been too Cavalier about this since starting with the first card based video cameras, I have never had a problem before. . Should I always be using the "Copy" function in Catalyst Browse instead?
Meanwhile I'm waiting for Sony to return my posts and emails with a way to salvage the files.
Lenny
1- I shot on 2 @ 128G Sony XQD cards . one in the AM (47 G) and a second after lunch only about 30 min. We used the Finder to drag & drop XDROOT to a folder on the clients hard drive. Never have had a problem with drag & drop for many years but maybe I've been too Cavalier and that is the source of problem.
2- Anyway 1st card copied fine and client thought he had copied the 2nd card fine also, but i don't know how carefully he looked at the files. We were in a rush (always dangerous) . At end of 2nd transfer I noticed the Mac ( on battery ) said power was low so I moved everything to a table with AC for the Mac as I intended to copy both cards again to a backup drive.
3- When I put the 2nd card in to copy for backup(drag & drop) there was an error message saying the card was unreadable . So I first ejected and reinserted. This time no error message , so I began drag & drop but the transfer stopped in an instant and read only 30.5 MB on the new folder. I started to get worried.
4 - So I inserted card into FS7. Error message said the card needed to be repaired so I said OK .The repair seemed to go OK, but when I looked at the thumbnails there were no files there. I returned to the computer to try drag & drop again but the same same thing happened - 30.5 MB.
5. I tried to read the card in Catalyst Browse but while it showed the XDROOT folder, it didn't see any files inside.
6. NOW it gets bizarre - OK I'm having trouble but this is just a backup after all, So I returned to the first copy on drive 1 to make sure it copied properly the first time. At least we'll have one good copy.However while 2 folders labelled card 1 and card 2 are on the first drive (each containing an XDROOT folder- I call these "virtual cards") , card 2 appears to be an exact copy of Card 1 - 46.5GB. It also has exactly the same mxf #'s and file sizes.
7. Furthermore if I look at these 2 "virtual cards" on my Mac laptop using Catalyst Browse, I cannot see any video files in "Card 2" -so it is not an exact copy after all.
8. Confusing us more - Using a PC Catalyst browse however does see video files on Card 2 and they are same as Card 1.
9. I go back to my Mac and examine the file structure of the 2nd ( corrupted) XQD card and while it has the same file names as Card 1 - they all have small identically sized files in them.
So it looks like Card 1 has somehow put information into Card 2 and corrupted it . It may simply be a directory issue or something else I know nothing about.
Re how this happened I am not sure and of course I don't want it to happen again. My typical workflow is on a mac to copy the XDRoot folder from the XQD card to a folder on clients drive using the finder - thus making wager I call what I have always called a "virtual card" . From that copy of the card I do any work withy catalyst browse to break into Pr Res or whatever. Perhaps I have been too Cavalier about this since starting with the first card based video cameras, I have never had a problem before. . Should I always be using the "Copy" function in Catalyst Browse instead?
Meanwhile I'm waiting for Sony to return my posts and emails with a way to salvage the files.
Lenny
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epicdream
Well-known member
That is weird and whilst I don't have a solution for you can I suggest that you look at something like Red Giant's Offload software. I use it all the time and I find it very easy to use and pretty quick at transfers. It does checksum checks and you see the images of each clip as it copies across for piece of mind.
Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
Thanks, After I try to repair this card, I will definitely start looking for a more reliable way to offload cards. What else is recommended besides RED Giant. Is Shotput still around. What about Catalyst Browse , does that copy the entire XDROOT folder?
Also it seems to me this would not have happened if the XQD cards had a write protection switch.
Also it seems to me this would not have happened if the XQD cards had a write protection switch.
Viddovation
Veteran
Wow, that sucks.
Not that it helps you right now, but for future reference, I'd never do the Finder drag and drop transfer, or the equivalent on PC. When you do that the computer moves each file individually, without any interconnected dependency checking. Also, it doesn't do a CRC check on the file transfers themselves.
By contrast, transfers done with Content Browser or Catalyst Browse can include a CRC check but also verify the file dependencies to one another. Furthermore, you should navigate with the Sony software to the destination folder after the transfer and visually double check that the files are there and that the software is satisfied.
Not that it helps you right now, but for future reference, I'd never do the Finder drag and drop transfer, or the equivalent on PC. When you do that the computer moves each file individually, without any interconnected dependency checking. Also, it doesn't do a CRC check on the file transfers themselves.
By contrast, transfers done with Content Browser or Catalyst Browse can include a CRC check but also verify the file dependencies to one another. Furthermore, you should navigate with the Sony software to the destination folder after the transfer and visually double check that the files are there and that the software is satisfied.
Viddovation
Veteran
Catalyst Browse and Content Browser don't so much copy the entire folder as much as they rebuild it. This is why they support transferring only a subset of files in the folder, and create new valid XDROOT folder in the process. Software like Shotput just does full directory transfers with CRC.
epicdream
Well-known member
Yes, Offload copies everything and keeps the XDROOT folder and contents intact.
Lenny - this sounds correct and I hope you are right. I have been using the Finder method for years now as well (with P2, Canon files and now Sony( and have never had any trouble... but perhaps have just learned a valuable lesson. You mention that "client thought he'd copied 2nd card fine" ... so I'm assuming you were packing up, etc and did not see this transfer happen (certainly been there before myself)? My hunch is that 2nd card was copied into root file structure of that first "virtual copy".... Have you tried looking at that first back up with Cat Browse to see if it allows you to find/see contents of the 2nd card?
Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
If you look through my long post the back up of the first card is thoroughly corrupted.
I'll probably go through Cat Browse in the future. What does Offload offer that Catr Browse doesn't.
Can both stitch together spanned cards?
BTW - Juan Martinez has already sent me the Sony address in teaneck NJ to send the card for recovery. Crossing my fingers.
Lenny
I'll probably go through Cat Browse in the future. What does Offload offer that Catr Browse doesn't.
Can both stitch together spanned cards?
BTW - Juan Martinez has already sent me the Sony address in teaneck NJ to send the card for recovery. Crossing my fingers.
Lenny
Viddovation
Veteran
I've not used Offload, but if it's like Shotput, it only makes exact copies of the folder. No special functions for joining spanned cards. Shotput's best feature was it could copy to multiple destinations simultaneously.
Sony Content Browser is the only one that I know of which can join spanned clips. Content Browser lets you add clips to existing folders, so you can join multiple cards worth of footage into one XDROOT folder.
epicdream
Well-known member
Offload is simply a means to copy your media to one or multiple locations. It doesn't muck around with it, just securely copies the data.
http://www.redgiant.com/products/offload
http://www.redgiant.com/products/offload
Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
So how do people deal wspanned clips these days ?