C100: Nothing Recorded / Clips Not On Card

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digitalinnovations

Well-known member
So I had a quick shoot yesterday with my C100 and when I put my SD card in there is nothing on the card. During the shoot I obviously could see the record light and the timecode churning away but I cannot find any clips on the card. What could it be? I am at a total loss to find the solution and appreciate any help.
 
Sorry to hear Jeremey. What brand and speed is the card? I typically only hear of issues with non-SanDisk cards.
 
digitalinnovations said:
So I had a quick shoot yesterday with my C100 and when I put my SD card in there is nothing on the card. During the shoot I obviously could see the record light and the timecode churning away but I cannot find any clips on the card. What could it be? I am at a total loss to find the solution and appreciate any help.
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There is a good chance you may be able to recover the footage. If it was a case where it was actually writing to the card but failed to write the header files, or if the card just died at the end or when you inserted it into the computer. Fortunately since C100 doesn't record to a proprietary high-end format, off the shelf recovery software should be able to deal with it. Data Rescue is one I've used in the past. Definitely I would not use that card ever again.
 
Sorry to hear that, Jeremy. In the past, I've had success using Puran File Recovery (for Windows) to get back damaged SD card footage. It's free software, so it can't hurt to try.

And, yes, dual record is the only way to go. I've been burned in the past because of a bad SD card, and now I will not use a camera that doesn't have the ability to dual record.

Good luck!
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Arri Alexa does not have dual record.
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Well, I meant a camera that records to SD cards. ;)

Alexa, P2 & RED media is significantly more robust than flimsy SD cards, so not quite as risky there. That said, I'm surprised RED hasn't made a dual REDMAG module for their DSMC2 system.
 
I've actually had a lot more issues with CFast than SD cards. I've yet to have an SD card go bad (I did have a MicroSD go bad, so maybe that counts), while I've had about three occurrences of issues with Cfast. I've also been using SD cards over a longer period of time.

And SD has been around longer in general. I know it's considered consumer, but I wonder if overall it's actually more reliable than some "professional" media.

The Arri Amira has two CFast slots, but stupidly only records to one at a time. So, if I get an Amira I may also get a Video Deviecs Pix-E5 to use as a backup recorder since it's the smallest recorder/monitor that records 4K.

Even if the the failure rate is extremely low, other issues can happen. Card accidentally gets formatted, lost, destroyed, etc. Always have a backup when you can.
 
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Have you tried to play them back in-camera or just on your computer? It might be the problem is a driver on your PC.
 
puredrifting said:
Let us know if and what you can recover.
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Unfortunately I was unable to recover any of the footage from that particular shoot. The crazy thing is, after trying two different recovery programs, there was still recoverable footage on the card from shoots that were over a year old - I guess those just so happened to not be overwritten even after nurmerous formats.

So how crazy is all this? Timecode was running and record light on but nothing written. I have even been able to recreate the issue with that particular card.

Luckily that shoot was just B-Roll and didn't include any on-screen talent so it was just my time to re-shoot it - which I did this morning.

I've had two shoots since this "ordeal" and I've dual-recorded with different cards (of course) and had no issues so it appears to have been just a card-related / isolated event...thank goodness.
 
Liam Hall said:
Have you tried to play them back in-camera or just on your computer? It might be the problem is a driver on your PC.
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I did try checking the card in-camera as soon as nothing showed up on multiple import/transfer programs; nothing showed up in-camera either. I even tried hitting "record" and couple times and it did the same thing (record light on and timecode rolling) but when I switched over to playback there was nothing again. So weird!
 
Glad you didn't lose any footage that was irreplaceable!

Cards do go bad. It's happened to me a couple of times, with SanDisk and Transcend, in a GH4 and a C100. After the GH4 incident, I got the C100 and I dual record every gig now. It's the only way to be sure.
 
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