Please help with HMC test?

P

PaulWM

Active member
Hi

I'm working on my first low budget feature with my HMC151 and I have hit a major problem already.

I brought in willing actors and actresses to a location I hired recently. Shot day one of a three day shoot on Transcend 16GB SDHC cards - no problems, footage looks great.

Day two started off really well with a fresh 16GB card from the same manufacturer. Shot some nice looking footage throughout the day, played back a few clips for us to review. Switched HMC off whilst we set up for the next shot, switched camera back on (using same Panasonic high capacity battery) and we had a 'Check Card' message. Took card out, reinserted several times investigated to make sure the little lock had not been partially set - but the camera gave the same message each time.

Tried not to panic in front of about 20 people. I swapped the card for another 16GB card and carried on - again no problems, footage looks great, able to review clips etc

When I eventually got home I was able to copy data off several cards and back them up to two different spare hard drives (plus I spread the clips including folder structure across lots of DVD's just in case).

However, the 'rogue' card is invisible to the PC (and camera). I contacted Transcend and they suggested I first download free software (some have been mentioned on this forum) to test first. I did but again nothing including programs like Recuva can see anything on the card. I know that material was on there because several of us actually watched the clips.

Transcend said that if this does not work then send the card to them for further investigation. That worries me - what if the company don't even bother to check properly and for ease just send out a free replacement card (or am I being paranoid?)


My 6 new Transcend 16GB cards had all previously been recorded over from beginning to end with no problems (after formatting in camera first). I also took advice from these forums and deleted all clips rather than reformat.

Firstly do any of you know if Transcend have proper recovery labs?

From the symptoms I'm experiencing it seems that I have a physical problem with one card and there are companies out there who boast that they can recover data under the circumstances. They do this by taking the guts of the card away from the contacts and copy the data straight off the board in a special reader apparently. This is expensive but cheaper than bringing everyone back (and in the process losing face with the cast - it may look like I was totally incompetent).

However, I am now wondering if it is actually the card that is at fault or the camera. Here's why:

I noticed that on location, if I stopped recording and left the camera alone for a while then tried to play the material back, it took a long time to switch into play mode. My cards are all fairly full at the moment and each time I press play it can take up to FOUR minutes to get anything to play. Is this because I have so much on the card that a buffer cannot cope? If this is not normal, then perhaps the camera is faulty.

So secondly, please can anyone with lots of material on a 16GB card tell me how long it takes the camera to get in to play back mode? When I captured material on previous shoots I never filled the cards up to any where near capacity so I did not experience any real lag when playing back clips.

Thank you

Paul
 
Are you using class 4 or above cards? If you are and you formatted the card in camera and did several read and write tests on the cards then it might be a camera fault.

When my cards are full or close to it there is still no delay in playing back a clip. How much more expensive is it to re-shoot what you lost than having a company restore the files? Because unless it is a significant amount I still think it would just be more efficient to just reshoot the scene. Data restoration does not always yield a 100% recovery of lost files which would mean you have to shoot some stuff anyway. Plus, if you reshoot you will already know what works and what doesn't for the scene. You could shoot in half the time it took before or less.

I had to reshoot half a night's work once due to a miscommunication that lead to a p2 card being deleted before it had been dumped. Shooting those scenes again went by so fast because I knew exactly what we need in terms of lighting and camera movements and the talent knew exactly to do to make their performance perfect. The end result was actually several times better than if we hadn't lost the footage.

Technical problems happen all the time, I doubt your cast and crew will be that upset that they might have to do the same work again, it is a necessary evil of the job.
 
1) Never use a card you haven't tested (or any piece of equipment, for that matter). I just use a computer to fill and dump each new card a few times before using for anything critical... and I've never had a problem later that didn't show up in the initial testing.


2) Have you tried repairing the card in the camera? Next time, try that FIRST.

KKeller said:
echnical problems happen all the time, I doubt your cast and crew will be that upset that they might have to do the same work again, it is a necessary evil of the job.
Click to expand...
Boy, you narrative filmmakers have it so easy!
 
Hi 1) I used new class 6 cards but as I say these were all tested first and showed no problems. Camera was in use since November too and again has worked flawlessly (I was learning to really like this cam).

2) I didn't think to take data recovery software with me to try and make on the spot repairs.

I see what you are saying about re-shooting and I am sure you are correct - it would be quicker. However, it took a while to get the 20 people together at the same time and the location was expensive so I think that recovery, if it is possible will work out far cheaper.
 
It's stories like this that get me scared...

I haven't had any SD card failures yet, but I'm afraid it's going to happen at the absolute wrong time.

Personally, playback has never taken a long time for me....and that's even with a fairly full card. So, I'm leaning towards the fact that its a fault of the camera.

I do wish the HMC had a redundancy option....
 
I have never heard of anyone losing footage on a card after checking playback in the camera.
It could be a faulty camera, have you had the camera checked out?
 
No I have not had a chance yet to send the camera off for checking. However, today I handed the card over to a data recovery guy. According to a friend he successfully recovered someone's 'lost ' SXS media recently so it is worth a try.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
 
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Have you tried inserting the card in a separate SDHC card reader, seeing if it recognizes the files and downloading files to your computer? If you can see the "Private" folder, try dumping files on your NLE timeline.
 
I've had the same "Check Card" problem with an class 6 Transend 16gb card. I never recovered the data (not important to me in that case), but I did learn a few lessons.

1) For important shoots, pay extra for more reliable cards
2) The guy at B&H told me that cards are most likely to fail within the first few formats--if the are going to fail. He suggested reformatting a card in the camera 6-7 times. If it hasn't failed yet, it's more likely to be reliable.
3) Pray
 
There are lots of strings already about this, it's worth spending some time serching. In my case I lost the last clip only but it was the most important. I tried everything to recover it but no luck. Seems that Transcend "made in Taiwan" are the biggest culprits.
 
bazza said:
Seems that Transcend "made in Taiwan" are the biggest culprits.
Click to expand...

When I first investigated SDHC cards for my HMC150, I tried 5 different brands ( including Transcend ) and decided to go with 6 Patriot "Blue" cards because they had the best performance in benchmark tests, and that I've had good experience with other Patriot memory products over the past few years. To date I have never had any problems with the "Blue" Patriot cards over the past 9 months.

I am now switching over to their 32GB Patriot IRIS cards because they perform even better than the "Blue" SDHC cards ( Patriot designed them for prof video recording ) and they come with a 5 year warranty.
 
Thanks for all the responses. Yes I did try a different card reader but no I have not cleaned the contacts yet. They looked pristine under a magnifying glass so it will be interesting to see how the data recovery guy responds. I have not seen Patriot cards for sale over here in the UK but I will do a search in a minute.

I would be too scared to use 32GB card though after this experience! I think I will go and buy smaller 8GB cards instead of the 6 x 16GB that I've been using.
 
Patriot IRIS SDHC memory cards
- They are designed specifically for professional video recording
- They benchmark very fast ( 17 MB/sec write speed, 20 MB/sec read speed )
- They come with a 5 year warranty
- They cost about the same as other brands ( in Canada: $45 for a 16GB, $95 for a 32GB )

Patriot IRIS SDHC Web Page
http://www.patriotmemory.com/products/groupdetailp.jsp?prodgroupid=66&prodline=4&group=Signature%20SDHC&catid=68

Canadian Store Where I Bought My SDHC Cards From
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProdList&cmd=pl&id=FMD.218.675&sort=0&mfg=PATRIOT

NewEgg Web Page for Patriot IRIS SDHC Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=patriot+iris&x=0&y=0
 
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