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EX1R Lengthy Horror Story with happy ending and a Big Question Mark
My EX1R had a persistent problem, which is irrelevant to this discussion. Fortunately, before sending the camera off to Sony for exorcism (it’s still there, awaiting a new lens), I stored its setting on an SxS card. AM I GLAD I DID!
Work started pouring in the moment I didn’t have a camera. I borrowed a friend’s EX1R. He told me it had a buzz on the headphone jack, though the audio itself was clean. I tried it out; the buzz was very loud – no way to monitor audio properly.
So I went into the shooting menu, navigated to the bottom category (“Others”), and chose All Reset/Execute.
Result: No audio monitored at all. Audio was recorded, and cleanly, but I couldn’t hear anything via the headphone jack. Nor could I hear previously-recorded clips in playback.
I tried all the usual tricks, removing the battery, restarting several times, All Resetting several times.
Nada. If I’d had a small enough screwdriver, I would’ve removed the memory battery, but I didn’t, so I didn’t.
Then, out of desperation more than anything else, I inserted my SxS card, with MY camera’s settings on it, and recalled its settings. Immediately, not only did the audio monitoring started working again, but it had no buzz (a problem that the camera apparently had had for months).
So…. Now I’m both relieved and a little freaked. This incident has put the fear of God into me. Should I be storing my camera settings on every SxS card, on a regular basis? What happened to my friend’s camera to (1) make it start to buzz, (2) make the audio monitoring disappear, and (3) restore its proper audio monitoring when ANOTHER camera’s stored settings were restored to it?
In short, what happened, & can I do anything to make sure it doesn’t happen again?
Thanks for bearing with my tale of horror. Please help me write a better ending so I don’t wind up in a pit with a pendulum some day.
Bob (“E. A. Poe”) Cole
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14 Replies
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It’s not a mystery– your Setup file loaded your settings and probably corrected some logic problem in the owner’s current setup. It’s good to keep a setup file handy for situations like these (and of course to back up your Picture Profiles and other settings). It’s possible that the Monitor setting was stuck or otherwise not correct as this controls the headphone output.
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[Ian Cook] “your Setup file loaded your settings “
Ian, what would I have been able to do, had I not had the SxS card with the settings stored on it?
Does formatting the card in the camera remove the stored settings? Can I move the stored settings to a hard drive or a CD?
Those settings are valuable! It was a total afterthought to store the settings when I sent my camera off to Sony Repair.
Bob C
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I’m not Ian Cook (he’ll be glad to know!) but I think I can answer your questions.
You would have been stuffed had you not kept your camera settings. I would have thought that yes, certainly, you would lose the settings from the card had you formatted. Yes, you can keep the settings on other drives than the S X S cards, I keep mine on a memory stick.
I never format cards other than when used in a camera for the first time. I merely delete clips to clear a card for re use.
Michael Slowe
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Michael has a good point regarding formatting. While it’s good to format the cards occasionally there is no real long term benefit to be had vs doing a ‘delete all.’ And if you format without backing up your settings file, it’s gone. If you want to back it up it is stored on the card in SONY/PRO/CAMERA/XDCAM_EX/PMWEX1R as ‘setup.suf’. Save this to your computer or another drive.
If he hadn’t stored his settings a system reset on its own may have done the trick but I can’t say for sure without knowing what caused the problem.
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I have my settings for my EX-3 on a SDHC, class 10 card(with adapter)…its a 4gb and that’s all I use it for…it will hold all my settings….It comes in real handy when I want match other EX-3’s, so I can have all cameras matching….it has never let me down. And it will free up a SXS card….
Bill Griffin
HD Cameraman
972-475-6870
http://www.dallascamguy.com
Dallas, Texas USA -
Thanks all. This is really valuable information. I will be deleting a lot of clips from now on, rather than formatting. I had always thought formatting was the way to go.
Again with hypotheticals (because five hours ago this was not hypothetical at all!):
When the camera seems to have an intractable problem, and no amount of depowering/repowering avails, would it be okay/advisable to take out the battery in the base (which I assume maintains the long-term memory)?
Bob C
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I wouldn’t go that far, you will probably be losing really valuable data for running the camera, Ian will doubtless confirm. I’d stick to re sets in the event of more trouble but why anticipate, these cameras are pretty solid performers and your problem was a one off, and you don’t know what your friend did to invite that problem.
Michael Slowe
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Hope this doesn’t muddy the waters but … I keep all my settings on an 8Gb card but this has been formatted numerous times (in the camera)and it hasn’t deleted the settings file. Only found this out by accident when wiping a whole load of cards before a shoot. Obviously worth having it backed up onto a stick too though as you say Michael.
Martin Phillips Freelance Cameraman / Producer / Editor
Chesham, Buckinghamshire, UK. http://www.videodvdmaker.co.uk -
That is not possible– perhaps you were doing a Delete All instead of formatting? Under no circumstances is the setup file left on the card after formatting in the camera. If you format a card with a settings file on it you will lose the settings file.
Another thing which has been brought up before and merits repeating (I have to break this to someone at least a couple times a month)– you cannot recover anything from a card formatted in the camera. Ever. An in-camera format is a secure low-level format which overwrites the data on the card. The camera does this for performance reasons to manage erase/write cycles during recording. Please be careful. It’s not a question of finding the right recovery tool– the data is gone and cannot be retrieved by any means.
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The issue for which I wrote the original post above happened on a friend’s EX1R that I was borrowing — this issue is on MY camera, just back from Sony.
I just got my EX1R back from Sony repair. In addition to a new lens (for a backfocus issue, which may or may not be fixed) they updated the software. Today, without changing anything except for putting my SxS (Sony brand) cards into the camera, I tried monitoring the audio – nothing in the headphones, just as with my friend’s camera last week. I restored my old settings from my SxS card – and just as with my friend’s camera, audio monitoring returned, & worked perfectly all day long. So I wonder whether it is just some software issue.
Ooookay. I can’t blame myself or my friend for this one. The audio monitoring on my camera worked before I sent it to Sony; it didn’t when it came back; it works now. I’m not doing anything exotic – just line in audio monitoring and no adjustments to the audio menu At All. (I also tried monitoring the camera mic – same problem, fixed by same system restore.)
What is going on with these cameras to cause audio monitoring to stop working? Two separate cameras now, same issue, same fix.
It’s as scary as a creaky door in a haunted house.
Bob C
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