EX 3 XDCAM media storage problem

[Don Greening]

If you empty or reformat your cards using something other than the camera you’ll sometimes get the reformat warning.

[William Mims] “he EX 3 had divided the 42 minute piece into 4 sections and I never turned off the camera during that time.”

Cards are formatted in FAT32 so both Mac and PCs can read and write to them. FAT32 has a 4Gbyte file size limit so the longer clips get broken up in pieces. The Sony software programs put them back together when you transfer. So yeah, it’s normal.

– Don

Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[William Mims]

Don, thanks. I’ll watch in the future and see if that is what I have been doing.
Okay, Don I know this is off topic, but I have to say it. Columbia Pictures sent me to Vancouver for 6 weeks on a movie years ago. Loved your city, loved your people and the ‘Only cafe’ (in Gas Town?)great fish, strange people. Anyway, I miss Vancouver, can’t wait to return-a great place to make movies, too bad I am a Yank.

Mims

Mims

[Don Greening]

[William Mims] ” too bad I am a Yank.”

My wife actually has an aunt and uncle living in Turlock CA but keep that under your hat 🙂 They’re pretty nice ‘yanks’ too.

Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[Ian Cook]

Most common cause of the ‘Media Needs to Be restored’ warning is DSSTOR files placed on the card by the Mac OS. These are small hidden files the Mac OS puts into every folder it opens in order to keep track of the folder layout. (If you enable Hidden Files in Finder on your Mac you’ll see them everywhere.) They’re harmless enough but when the camera sees unknown files on the card it prompts to restore. It will keep doing this until the card is reformatted and the extraneous files deleted.

[Dave Morrison]

Hey Ian, I realize this is a bit out of your area, but you might be able to help me understand this a little better. I just attended a demo of the Panasonic AF100 camera and they made a big point of saying that they HAD to slide the little “write protect” switch on their SD cards before inserting them into a Mac or else they’d lose files upon insertion. I was dumbfounded and SOOO happy that I was using an EX1 when I heard that. Obviously, Sony must have done something different when they designed the XDCAM series!! Can you expand on this issue?

[Brent Dunn]

Have you checked your firmware for upgrades? I’ve had issues on my EX-1 before the firmware upgrade using the same Transcend cards. I had two shoots lost due to the dreaded “Restore Media” prior to these updates.

A few months ago I had my 2nd shooter forget to change the battery on a shoot and had the camera turn off during recording using the SxS card. It restored media, all still there.

I still have the adapter’s, but use them only after I’ve filled my SxS cards first. I still have a sinking feeling using SD cards due to my bad experience.

Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.net

Sony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro Tower, Quad Core,
with Final Cut Studio

HP i7 Quad laptop
Adobe CS-5 Production Suite