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Yet another SxS PRO card failure
I had my second SxS card failure last week. The card would only copy 3% on the PC (win 7 64 bit) either direct or through the clip browser and the PC would freeze, the same thing was happening in the camera, after I located the offending clip, which was 31 minutes long and the most impotant one, as it contained several speeches.
After wasting many hours to pinpoint the problem, I loaded the card through the Camera USB into Premiere pro CS5 and created a new project. I dumped all clips on the timeline and all were scrubbing ok.
Then i tried to export to media encoder in the same HD file format.
3% into it, total computer freeze…
After a couple of restarts I pinpointed the problem on the premiere pro timeline to be a partially corrupt section on the long 31 minute clip, then I proceeded to add 1 second of black video on top of the damaged area and tried exporting again.
This time it worked and I managed to save the clip on the hard drive.
The card was sent to my supplier and then to Sony.
I received a phone call yesterday, that they cannot retrieve any files at all and a new card will cost me $AU900.00, shame on you Sony, this card was used around 50 cycles, nowhere near the 100.000 cycles they guarantee, they haven’t got a clue how to save the files, lucky I did all the experimenting and had success.
At least there should exist some software that can retrieve at least the good files if the card is damaged, I must mention that I tried few recovery programs too, and they all froze the PC.
I have had enough of SxS…. -
8 Replies
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This is very scary indeed. It seems that Sony should work on some system of diagnostics that us users can run to check the patency of cards. There has to be a way of predicting this before it happens.
Greg Ondera
http://www.Plexus.tv
http://www.SurgeonToday.org -
It’s very frustrating that I have to spend hours to find workarounds that may or may not work, then to have Sony wanting to charge me $900.00 to replace their flagship faulty card, as well as saying that my files are not recoverable, when I recovered them myself.
I must say here that for non critical jobs, I have been using the cheap cards with the adaptor and never had an issue. -
I understand your grief but can I just say that prior to the ‘tapeless revolution’ I have experienced shooting a days work and finding that the tapes would not playback – disaster!
But with the technology today, on a ‘critical’ shoot you could use the SxS card AND an outboard device like the nanoflash recorder; then you have the lifesaving ‘backup’ – albiet at a cost. But if you have been bitten once its definitely food for thought.
BTW
I remember years ago when we had a 1″ portable field recorder. It was possible to incorrectly lace up the tape and then spend the whole day shooting only to find that it would not playback.
So we invented the “ILS” – “Idiot Lacing Syndrome”. The technique was to lace up the machine, record a min of bars, spool the tape off and relace. If the tape played back OK there was a good chance it was OK but, if it didn’t, then either of the two lace ups was wrong, and relace again until you determined which was the correct and stay with that. Ok, an old-timers story from days gone by.Sam Cole
On line Mastering Facility
FCP, Avid, Adobe
Sydney, Australia -
Great story Sam. Thanks
My grief is with Sony, claiming that their super expensive cards are superior, when in fact that’s alot of crap.
As I mentioned before, I had to find out the hard way how to retrieve those clips, when the card was send to them, they were totally clueless and offered me a replacement to the tune of $900.00
For a card that is guaranteed 100.000 cycles, that’s alot of bull… -
Sony ranks as one of the worst companies for customer service. Years ago they burned me on a high end SVHS deck. The deck cost over 2K and was in the trash 1 year latter. I got tired of dealing with Sony. With the exception the the EX1R I have not purchased anything from them. I spent many days researching cameras before I bought the EX1R. I also purchased a ridiculously overpriced 32gig SxS card. I only hope that I don’t have similar problems as you are. Good Luck.
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I think like Sam suggested, use a nanoflash drive with it for critical work, or setup a second camera as backup.
I used 2 cameras just in case, good luck indeed! -
I agree that if sony is charging this much for a card that has failed, they should gladly replace it in exchange.
I had problems with the SD adapter and SD cards crashing. My sony SxS card saved me. So, I’m at the opposite end with being happy with my cards.
The Nano Flash is a great solution, but not cheap. I would request the next upgrade on these cameras to include a “Dual Recording” feature, that would allow us the option to record to both card slots, thus having redundancy that we all need.
Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.netSony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro Tower, Quad Core,
with Final Cut StudioHP i7 Quad laptop
Adobe CS-5 Production Suite -
Good point Brent, being able to record on both cards at the same time, would be a great solution. I still think Sony has to provide reliable recovery software, so if there are any bad sectors on the card, they can be ignored and move on to the next sector. Right now, even if there is one bad spot on the card, it just freezes the PC.
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