GH4 .mdt file errors while recording a wedding

K

kakokiki

Member
Hi everybody,

this weekend I did my third weeding of the season using the new GH4. The last 2 weddings were ok, and did not have any trouble with the camera. Everything was ok and the camera worked as expected.
But last night I did the 3rd weeding and have some issues using the camera. I was recording the weeding in 25fps 50mbps fullHD, and with the 3 cards I used (2 sandisk 32GB Extreme Pro 95MB/s and 1 Transcend 64GB 3Class R95W65) had some problems. In each card I found .mdt files that I can not open, in the camera as in the computer.

The name of the mdt files corresponds to what should be the .mov file, and some are 0 bytes and some are like 100 MB. (it seems like a normal size for a small clip, but i can not open it, even renaming it to .mov)

I was using the pana 12-35 2.8, with Jame's Miller settings for profile. I really don't understand what could happen. Maybe some drop frames? I could understand that happen maybe if I was recording 200mbps with the Sandisk for a long time, but at 50mbps all the cards qualify for the minimum speed requirements from the camera.

The lucky thing is that any of the files was really important, so in this case it's not a big trouble. But I'm starting to tremble if any of this happens in the ceremony, the dance or any really important moment. Usually I have a 2nd camera doing back up, but It's not the same quality and of course it's placed so it doesn't disturb to the photographers and rest of the people, so I can not really trust in what I get from this 2nd body.

Anyone experienced something like this? Any help would be great.
I'm gonna talk with Panasonic this week to ask what could had happen.

Thank you!!
 
I had this happen last month while filming a documentary. I can't open that file either, and I have no idea what shot/clip it could be.

SB
 
Had one clip happen on my last shoot in Alaska, out of the hundreds of shot I have no Idea if it was just a hiccup where there was no clip there in the first place or if I lost something. My Gh4 did lockup twice on me on this last shoot. Unresponsive even when you turn the power off, had to pull the battery both times to restart it. Not sure if that could have corrupted the file. I dont think I was recording when the camera froze. Operating under normal temperatures shooting 4k.
 
and also, a part from de .mdt files I experienced the same thing with the camera than Jon. It got unresponsive and even turning off the power didn't response. It was "locked" with the recording signal on and I had to take the battery out to restart. If I remember well didn't press record before that happen. But also, I had mdt files before that happen in other cards, so I think this is not a related problem with the mdt files.
Any other experience will be helpful.
 
Jon Neely said:
Had one clip happen on my last shoot in Alaska, out of the hundreds of shot I have no Idea if it was just a hiccup where there was no clip there in the first place or if I lost something. My Gh4 did lockup twice on me on this last shoot. Unresponsive even when you turn the power off, had to pull the battery both times to restart it. Not sure if that could have corrupted the file. I dont think I was recording when the camera froze. Operating under normal temperatures shooting 4k.
Click to expand...

Hi Jon, were you using the battery grip? Because this weekend is the first time I used it, the 2 weddings before were without the grip and didn't experienced any trouble. I'm thinking if it's not a connexion problem between the camera and the grip... I remember some strange issues when using the camera and I moved a little bit the grip. (it really doesn't fit how it should be, it is not very tight to the camera). I'm using the original one. GOnna make some tests soon.
 
With my Canon I got in the habit of reformatting the card in camera before every shoot. I had weird issues when I would "move" files off of the card onto my PC with the card reader and then use the card again without formatting it.

So I've been formatting my cards after every shoot out of habit. So far no issues.

My battery grip should be here this week, I'll mess with shooting and not formatting and see what happens.
 
This also happened to me, coincidently at a wedding I was shooting for a friend. I was using just the camera alone (without a battery grip) and the SanDisk Extreme Pro (95MB/s) SD card. I believe I was shooting in 4K at 29.97. The card was formatted in the camera the night before the shoot. The .mdt file size was 1.7GB and of course will not play as an .MOV. During the same shoot I had MOV files created that were over 2gb and some under. Since the error occurred I have recorded many more and larger MOV files without problems.

@Kakokiki Did you ever get in touch with Panasonic or find a way to recover the file?
 
Hi steve,
since I posted the error I have had no more trouble with the mdt files. I really thought that could be the grip, because I was using it with a battery grip priority and maybe some kind of movement between camera and grip could make a disconnection, and maybe the error. But as you say, it happens also without the grip, so is really anoying. I still freak out thinking it can happen again in a really important moment.
Because the files I lost where not important, I didn't try to recover them or to contact Panasonic.
Seeing the large file you lost, I hope it was not a really important moment of your wedding.
If you make any discover about these errors please share it with us.
Thanks!
 
I also got a .mdt type file from my GH4 camera recording in 4K MP4LCM mode. I was recording an hour long event onto a Sandisk 64GB 95 MB/s card. The camera split it up into 10 separate files, all .MP4 3.9GB files except for the last one which was a 3.9GB .mdt file. It was unreadable however I could transfer from the card into my computer or wherever else I wanted to load it (which is unusual for a corrupted file).
The problem is you can't open this file with any known software or recovery program I tried to use.
Being that Panasonic had created a recovery program for AVCHD files for the GH2 camera that worked very well, my first attempt was to call Panasonic to see if they had a recovery program for the GH4 .MP4 files. Well, calling their tech support in Jamaica was absolutely USELESS! I got zero help from the support there.
I called Sandisk, they were very helpful but the RescuePRO program they have couldn't open or fix the .mdt file.
It looks like others have had this problem with the GH4 recording .mdt files and there should be a way of repairing this file and converting it back to the file type it was suppose to be.
Any help would be much appreciated by me and many others.
 
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