Lost footage on HMC 40

Mackmorgan

Mackmorgan

New member
I'm new here. Been loving the forum. Seriously, speaking as a former lurker, it's been a godsend. So now I'm coming forward with a problem I had today.

I'm about to go into production on a quote unquote "no budget feature". We shot the audition footage and everything worked just fine. I formatted the Transcend (32gig, class 6) in the camera several times beforehand. No problems.

Fast forward to two days later, turn on the camera, error message, lost footage. All of it. What gives? Is this going to happen a lot. I've got to shoot a full length feature in 16 days (this summer) and I can't have this happen to me on scenes shot for the movie.

Is there something I should be doing? Is there a way to properly format the card inside the camera? Am I using the wrong brand (again, Transcend)? HELP! This lost footage (and I'm not worried about recovering it, don't need it) is making my bladder very nervous.

Rob
www.shesinthedetails.com
 
I'm going to have to guess at what went wrong here....

It sounds like a card failure. Most cards don't fail, but it can happen. In general if a car fails, it tends to do it when you use it the first few times. This is why I stress recording junk to a card, format it, record more junk, re-format, ... Do this several (6 to 12) times and on the last time, try copying the clips to the computer and playing them. IF the card works at that point, it's likely to be OK. If it fails, this is a problem card.

The issue about cards has come up before:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=197212


While you can use a 32 GB card, this is like putting all your eggs in one basket. One failure can be costly. Some use the 16 GB cards (90 minutes recording), some 8 GB cards (45 minutes recording), and some use the 4 GB cards. I like to use the 8 GB size, but a case can be made for the 16 and the 4 GB cards.

In your case, using 4 GB cards for you low/no budget movie would make sense. Each card could hold about 22 minutes of footage and can be backed up to a standard 4.7 GB DVD.



Bob Diaz
 
I'm not sure, but in thinking about it, I'm beginning to wonder if the larger cards, 32GB, have a higher failure rate than the smaller 4 GB and 8 GB cards.


Bob Diaz
 
i currently have a 16GB trancend card. only used it twice.

i will do what you adviced, to format and re-format many times while stupid card still has warranty from the store :)

anyways, i do crap my pants every time i am about to copy things t the laptop...and then againw hile i transport the laptop.
what if it failed
what if the files copied butare corrupted
what if the hard drive on the laptop dies
what if it gets stolen
what if....

ouch, it hurts!
 
To be on the safe side, just remember to flip the write protect switch on the card BEFORE you put it into the reader for your laptop. That way, it's 100% impossible to delete files from the card.

If one wants to be 99.99% safe, bring a second USB Drive with the laptop. There are small USB Powered drives that are now under $100 that hold 320 GB.

The idea is copy the files from the card to the main hard drive in your laptop. Next copy the files from the card to the USB Hard Drive. Also, make sure the laptop and the USB Drive are carried separately.

NOTHING is 100% safe, what if a 747 crashes into your house while your copying the files... :happy:


Bob Diaz
 
Have you planned out your on set workflow? I'd be interested in hearing how you are going to transfer, backup and re-use cards while on set.

I will be shooting a few shorts on HMC40 over the next few months.

A backup to external HD, and DVD/BluRay seems like a very good idea. You can have a trusted Production Asssitant doing that work while you continue to shoot on another card. Then once the footage has been verified on multiple sources you can swap the cards and repeat.

Remember, footage doesn't exist until it exists in 3 places.

hmmm...kind of makes me miss tape.
 
It's funny I ran across this thread. I had an error message come up while shooting two months ago, but I turned the camera off and on again. The message was gone, but so was that clip. Thank God it was only one clip that got trashed that day.

And then I had a card failure two weeks ago during a shoot. I lost everything shot that day. It's a 32GB ADATA brand SD card. I've been using it just about every weekend for the last four months.

I'm in contact with the manufacture and they should be replacing my card withing the next few weeks.
 
test your cards before critical use!!

Backup!!

Realize that nothing is for sure!! I've had way more problems with tapes having errors than SD cards, although those errors didn't result in a total loss of footage.

Using 2 16gb Transcend class 6 cards with no issues in either of my cameras.
 
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