Corrupt XDCAM EX1 Clips — Will Not Import

[Craig Seeman]

COW has a file upload feature. See the little floppy disk icon on the far right of the icons as you type your message.

Just to make sure you’re doing this right, try a known good EX MP4. The SMI shouldn’t come into play at all. As far as VLC is concerned you’re just playing (or trying to play) and MP4 with MPEG2 on the inside.

[Marek Bilski]

Hi Jordan,

If you purchased in Oct ’09 the chances are, your SDHC adapter has a first generation internal controller based on the GL827L chipset.

At that particular time, the controller was not working very well with 32GB memory and Sony’s firmware.

From testing, we established that when we used that particular controller (GL827L) which Kingston was also based on, they all produced audio drop outs @ approx. 27mins duration.

The only way to fix this error is to try to load the footage in the clipbrowser and move the cursor left and right on the timeline and try to locate the precise position of the error (audio drop out) and try to cut it out with in and out points.

My suggestion for the future, is not to use ATP 32GB with your current Sony firmware until you perform a Sony firmware upgrade and migrate to 1.20 version which has eliminated that particular error on ATP 32GB memory cards only.

We had no choice, as we had no help from Sony, to come up with a solution ourselves and this is where we ended up improving and upgrading to the current controller which is a single chip solution, and has no issue with this particular error.

MxM Express’s card is easily recognisable with this new controller by the new orange label. This newest and the lastest controller has been used in Hoodman’s and MxML SDHC adapters for the past 6 months.

MxM Express

[Mark Santa-maria]

I too had a critical crash shooting a tv pilot and it was underwater nonetheless. Totally not reshootable.

I worked for weeks and weeks at the solution. Digging up my old roots and former bitnibbler days, I think I’ve developed what I think is a relatively reliable way of getting back almost all files. I’ve even been able to rebuild the bpav folder on a few occasions so everything read just fine in clip browser and the camera. But at the least I got the mp4s back. Usually, the clip being shot during the crash was only partially recovered.

I need more samples to try out my techniques on. If you have a corrupt sd card shot on an ex1 or ex3, and have exhausted all other software options or cant afford the clean room services, please contact me. I’m not charging. I want to prove my techniques will work consistently. If I can help you get your files back, I may ask for recommendations and a review later.

Whatever you do, dont write on the card again. Throw on the write protect tab. My technique does not write to the card, I just read from it. I end up using another card to test my recoveries with.

I’m serious…I need some more corrupt cards for testing and free recovery for you.

Mark

In the event of my untimely demise, it was all my fault. That said, “who the hell took my mouse?”