FS7: spanned XQD cards?

L

Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
How do you guys deal with spanned XQD cards in UHD.
I have an interview shoot coming up where we're shooting UHD on an FS7 and I'm sure we will end up spanning 64G cards.

Don't want to give the client files that are dicey and not joined .
This was easy in content browser.
 
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I would never shoot an interview as one long clip. Too many eggs in one basket and too cumbersome to edit and manage in post. There is almost always an opportunity then the talent pauses for second between questions, when the make-up needs a touch-up, when the talent needs to take a sip of water, when there is a sound interruption, when I need to change lenses, etc. I just pause for 1/2 second and then roll again. It is very easy during one of those pauses to also hit the slot select button and change to another card. I've been shooting on SxS cards and XQD cards since 1987 and not once have I ever a allowed a clip to span two cards. I could see where spanning might be useful on a classroom, a meeting, a press conference, etc. where there isn't a break, but not really needed on a typical interview. The best way to join clips is to never let them get split in the first place.
 
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Doug I understand and appreciate what your saying. But it happens. My question remains - how do you deal with spanned clips on XQD cards in XAVC-I . I'm kind of surprised that no one has answered yet. It was commonplace on an F3 or Ex1
 
It has timecode, and there are no duplicate frames between spanned cards, so it's exceptionally simple to connect two spanned clips. I think you're maybe over-thinking.

Also, if it's really a big deal, the 128GBs are $170 on B&H today. For interviews, XAVC-L may be a stronger codec and can run for an insanely long time.
 
Let me ask the question this way. On the F3 shooting XDCAM EX on SxS cards, if you spanned a card then the footage was unusable until you reconnected the cards in post. You could do that in an NLE but more commonly we did it in content browser.

Is that no longer true with XAVC-I and XQD cards? Can you simply use the footage on each card as separate clips then butt them up in post? That would be fine. I don't notice any problem playing back the separate cards in Catalyst browse.

I've had this camera since it came out but always managed to avoid spanning cards and suddenly realized I should know what the hell I'm doing.

I did just buy an extra 128G card and have enough to get through my gig but its 2 cameras shooting 4K so I want to be knowledgeable. No surprises on set.
 
Yes it's 100% fine. It's one of the things I really love about the FS7 and xavc when a file spans 2 cards you can just drop the files in your nle and edit as if there was no span all. 100% seamless between the clips unlike avchd which had a few frame glitch unless you co-joined it back together again.
 
Just did a test. Filmed a digital clock while card A filled up and automatically switched to card B. The camera closed out the last clip on A with filename 0059 and began recording on card B as filename 0060. I brought both clips into Vegas and played across the join area. The clock's seconds were dead on, didn't miss a beat. Totally seamless. This auto card switching works the same way whether you let it switch cards automatically or you hit the SLOT SELECT button for manual switching.

Mark
 
Len

While many things concern me with the FS7 I find it is exceptionally robust for card management.

My Insight doc (4k50p, long takes) the cards swapped many times

Never had any problems going across cards, although I do find the on screen warning a little annoying.

Also not worried about pulling cards while the camera is on, so you could feed through many cards and roll 'for ever'

S
 
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