something all f3 owners should read

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KineticNZ

Member
Hey All, this is probably just a heads-up but if anyone has any similar experience I would love to hear from you. I shot 15gb of 1080 50i footage to a freshly formatted sony SxS card on my F3 today. Running latest firmware. We wrapped a voxpop just as a thunderstorm started so I threw a jacket over the camera and switched it off. It was still recording. this is just a guess based on what happened subsequent.

We returned to base and I put the card into a Macbook Pro and opened FCP to import XDCAM. XDCAM browser opened but couldn't read the card, gave an error message which unfortunately I didnt note. I closed FCP, opened XDCAM transfer on its own, still couldn't read the card so I closed it also. By now I was starting to freak a little.

I then backed up the card to an external drive, drag and drop of the BPAV folder. 15gb of data, all normal, no problems with the copy.

I took the card which wouldn't read and placed it back in the camera. The camera gave the 'data needs to be restored' message which I was actually relieved to see. I selected execute and it said restoring data, took a reasonable amount of time, 40secs or so, went from zero to 56% and quickly through to finish.

I then went into thumbmnail mode.. no clips.

Eh? Card into computer and it reads at 0bytes. All 15gb of data from the card is erased by the camera when it told me it was doing a restore.

So I have spent the afternoon at Sony in sydney and the guy is as baffled as me. The data is gone off the card so we can only work off the backup of the card I made but every XML file is corrupted. Thats the main XML and every XML for every clip. They're just gibberish. All the data is intact, the folder structures are all there the file sizes are about right but something has corrupted every XML file making recovery impossible - or so the Sony Tech tells me. His first reaction is that because I removed the card from the camera and then restored it later the camera didn't know what to do but this makes no sense. All over the world people must be powering off cameras without realising they are still rolling. Its easy to do. If you don't know you made a mistake you would pull the card for offload just as I did. The camera cannot be wiping data as a result of this or this would be all over the net. wouldn't it? ...Is it?

So, to summarise. The camera didn't close the last clip properly. I tried to read it with XDCAM through FCP and then just with XDCAM browse. I placed the card back into the camera and it told me it needed to restore, it went through the restore process but actually erased all data. The data appears fine on the card copy with the exception of the XML's all of which are corrupted. So what happened and where did it happen? I didn't write protect the card when I put it into the computer, this was possibly the biggest mistake of all but regardless, no software should have overwritten and replaced the XML files for every clip. I never reviewed any of the clips I shot during the shoot but the camera behaved normally all day.

I'm not new to tapeless workflow, we've been P2 based for 5years, the F3 is our first SxS camera and this is the first time I have ever lost a shot. I am extremely concerned about this as should anyone who uses the F3, SxS XDCAM transfer and Macbook Pros.

Thoughts anyone?
 
The SxS system is virtually the same as the EX1 and EX3. Since those cameras have been around a long time You might want to search that sub-form, which is the "XDCAM EX" forum still within the "Other Cameras" forum.

My experience with the EX1 before the F3 was that the restore media, execute has always worked when there was a power interruption (i.e. the battery was disengaged or died) before it wrote to "end of file."

I recall one or two people in all those years with a complaint like yours. Rather than leaving it on to die, I think they switched it off while writing. I recall one guy using file recovery software to get his footage back (similar to a crashed hard drive.) The other guy wrote over his data and lost it.

I also wonder if electrical charge in the air from the lightning affected it, but since it copied to the computer I doubt that.

At any rate it has been extremely rare, somewhat correctable, and probably at least partially attributable to operator error. I'd give some shareware file recovery software a shot to try to get your XML files back.
 
No point in recovering data I already have a copy of.

I'll admit user errror in turning off while still rolling because thats the only thing that makes sense - I don't know that I did it however. I'll admit user error in not write protecting the card. None of that should result in what happened.

I will say I have probably offloaded over a thousand cards, mostly P2 and i have sometimes protected, sometimes not. I have been using SxS for just a few weeks and this has happened very early. Is it bad luck? Is the F3 a weak link? Is SxS not as robust as P2?

Bottom line is I followed a fairly standard workflow and lost all the footage from an SxS card. That's not good.
 
KineticNZ said:
No point in recovering data I already have a copy of.

I'll admit user errror in turning off while still rolling because thats the only thing that makes sense - I don't know that I did it however. I'll admit user error in not write protecting the card. None of that should result in what happened.

I will say I have probably offloaded over a thousand cards, mostly P2 and i have sometimes protected, sometimes not. I have been using SxS for just a few weeks and this has happened very early. Is it bad luck? Is the F3 a weak link? Is SxS not as robust as P2?

Bottom line is I followed a fairly standard workflow and lost all the footage from an SxS card. That's not good.
Click to expand...

This sounds like a fluke. I say that because no one else has been reporting similar issues, and as a previous poster said, the XDCAM-EX recording is a mature technology from the Sony EX lines of cameras. I've been a Sony EX user since 2008, and a F3 user since February, and I've never had an issue like this. Early in my experiences with the EX1 I did make the user error to wipe a card without properly dumping the data, and was able to use some hard drive recovery software, and then some clip salvaging software to get the data back.

In your case, the Cinemon .mp4 plugin ($99) may permit you to import the files into FCP. Or you may be able to dump the files into Premiere, and then convert them.
 
Try opening the clips in Adobe Premiere CS5.5 if you haven't already? Do they open up? (Premiere can be reached as free 30 day trial on Adobe dot com)
If they do open, export as ProRes or whatever and edit away in your editor of choice. Last clip might not work...
 
Thanks for the suggestions. Tried importing into the trial version of Premiere. No joy. Will give cinemon a try.

Glad to hear that this isn't common but I don't believe in flukes. This happened for a reason. A combination of circumstances and software versions but a definate reason.
 
did you try copying back to the chip and trying restore again? There are several softw. that offer to write an end of file footer in such cases. I would not give up so quickly! As long as you have those copies you still have chances. best of luck! I know what it must feel like....
 
KineticNZ said:
No point in recovering data I already have a copy of.
Click to expand...

but you still can't edit/play the clips?

http://www.aeroquartet.com/

they provide a web-based service that can reconstruct the files to playable form.

did you record more than one vid file to the card? seems to me turning off the camera while recording shouldn't corrupt any file but the last one. if you have more than one corrupt file, i'd guess that it wasn't a power-down while recording.
 
Im starting to think all the files are corrupt. The cinemon trial wont play the mp4s from that card but works with all other cards I have. Everything is there and in the right folder structure but seems to be corrupt.

Sony tried reconstructing it for me with no luck, I'd say its a dead duck. Unlucky for me I guess
 
on the aeroquartet site there's a small download called, "Treasured." it does a quick evaluation to tell you if it's worth attempting a recovery.

it's free.
 
I would also recommend Aeroquartet. A year ago I had a card go bad when someone shut down the a camera while it was still recording. Nothing would open it, but Aeroquartet recovered it all. Good Luck
cheers
Morton
 
I used Aeroquartet a few years back to recover a file I had deleted on an SxS card. It recovered it, with about 10 seconds lost, and about 4 to 5 seconds grabbed from a previously deleted file. Lost 15 seconds of an hour long file.
 
Just currious, when navigating through your BPAV folder, can you seen the mp4 media files? If yes, you could reimport those using Sony's XDCAM browser app to any storage location, it should make a fresh BPAV folder for you with good media and metadata.
 
The entire folder structure is present but the files are corrupted.All of them, mp4 included. Just as an update, I've not been able to recreate this issue. The only variable I can put this down to is static charge from the jacket that was thrown over the camera. Its a shocker for static (pardon the pun). I'll not be wearing it or anything similar around the F3 again.
 
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