-
HXR-NX5U Battery dies, all data shot after turning on until then lost
Epic fail with I think no solution.
Shooting to SD card off battery power. Battery getting low power so turn off camera, pull out battery and replace (may have pulled out battery before the flashing lights to SD cards turned off on my haste). Turn on, get message to recover data or something but when I press buttons leading me to do that it rejects the card in slot A (which was full, recording to B). All new to me so when it doesn’t seem to repair data or give me option to view anything I pull both cards and replace with a blank one and start recording. Second battery suddenly shuts off before indicator warning (second one not a Sony battery) but the shoot is over. When I put in another battery, it gives me the data recovery or whatever message, complains about the wrong SD card in slot A.I foolishly press the buttons to say I don’t want to recover data because saying I did didn’t seem to help. It lost an hour of recording done continuously on that card up until the time the battery died but kept the earlier footage done up until the machine was turned off for a break.
Then I foolishly went through the same thing with the first two cards and lost two hours of recording on one SD card which I think I never turned off, retained video shot earlier that day on the slot A card which was already full and the slot B card data shoot earlier that day but all data from the shoot was lost.
No sign of data when put in camera or with the Sony utility with card in machine connected to Windows 7 computer via USB.
Am pretty confident I screwed up and have lost everything. I’ve used this camera a lot for a couple of years and am pretty sure I’ve run down a battery while shooting, never encountered these messages before and was too impatient probably.
1. is the data lost for eternity?
2. was there any hope to save the data (should I have just copied the cards to my hard drive, did the camera actually delete recoverable data on the cards) eg. what should I have done or would it not make any difference?
Words of wisdom much appreciated. -
7 Replies
-
While I’ve never encountered the issue with the memory cards you describe, I would recommend doing your best to avoid spanned clips (don’t let the recording roll from one card to the next). At a convenient time, stop and switch to the other card and begin to record again. As you know, of course, always wait for the lights to finish blinking and the “SD Card Write” on-screen indicator to finish before ejecting the card.
What SD cards are you recording on? Sandisk Extreme 32GB UHS1 Class 10 (all three of the 30, 45 and 90 Mb/s versions) have treated me very well.
I think your problem was made worse when the battery died unexpectedly while recording a spanned clip. I figure the camera had trouble fixing the span as well as the un-closed recording. I really don’t know about any proper procedure to attempt the recovery of the clips. I would backup the cards to my computer immediately, then put them back in the camera (in the same slots as before) and attempt any prompted in-camera file recovery. If that fails there may still be usable video on the cards backups. Maybe mpegstreamclip can find and extract them, I don’t really use it much. If it comes to that, I’m sure someone will have some advice on how to proceed.
Some other general advice. Always backup each card, in its entirety, to its very own dedicated folder and don’t put anything else in that folder. Import, transcode or otherwise access your video from that backup, not by plugging the camera into the computer. Format the card in-camera before each use. Do not constantly delete individual old clips to make room for new clips. If you notice the total record time of a freshly formatted card is a couple minutes less then it used to be, use the cameras “Media Empty” function (see manual).
I’ve had many problems with the Sony NP-F970 and F770 batteries dieing unexpectedly, usually with well over 50% charge remaining. I now use The Pearstone BPS-F975 batteries and have never given me any problem at all. They have 7200mAh, vs Sonys F970 at 6400mAh These were the recommended replacement on the B&H page for NX5 accessories. Now B&H has Watson NP-F975 7800mAh for $85, in place of the Pearstones. See the accessories tab here-
-
Thanks for the note. Yeah I really think not copying whatever was on them to a hard drive prior to putting them back in camera was a bad move. I never use the Sony software with the card in camera via USB, just read somewhere a guy recovered files the camera didn’t see using that so tried it out without success. Use the card reader in my Macbook Pro. Save to a unique folder and access that folder to log and transfer in FCE4.
Pretty sure it’s not a card issue. Use SanDisk Extreme 10 32 GB 45 MB/s that BH recommended. Format in camera prior to each use.
Not aware letting data move from A to B slot cards can open you up to problems. Do that pretty commonly. Wonder if that was a challenge for the first cards removal and camera remembered it and it screwed up the third card which ended with the battery dying.
Second battery was a: Power 2000 ACD-712 Rechargeable Battery ( Sony NP-F970 Equivalent ) I don’t recommend it for this camera. Camera can give error message about it sometimes that goes away with a turn off/turn on, it takes forever to charge and its performance is very variable.
Appreciate the mpegstreamclip tip, will look in to it.
-
Short answer is yes the footage can be recovered if you still have those cards and have not recorded anything else to them or changed the file structure. I’m not going to type it all out. The answers are in the cameras user manual which should be read in its entirety before ever using the camera. Also, if you plan on doing shoots that require continuous rolling for more than an hour, you should be using the optional FMU128 drive AND be plugged into AC, not running on a battery to avoid this very problem. That goes for any camera.
-
Thank you for the note to look in the operating manual. I did that already and came across on page 106 in the bottom right hand corner “Damaged or lost image data will not be compensated for, and may occur in the following cases: -If you eject the memory media, turn the power off on your camcorder, or remove the battery pack for replacement while your camcorder is reading or writing images files on the media (while the access lamp is lit or flashing).” which is what I did the first time (battery pulled off while access light flashing in my haste) and maybe in effect the second time by the battery running out. I still have the two cards with missing data unaltered since that day if someone can find a way to pull off the data if it’s even there.
-
If and when I am in your shoes, I use file scavenger to recover bad files. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
I believe you can download trial version which will tell you if it can find any files on your media, before paying for it.
It has saved me on accidentally deleted hard drive files and I have used it on sd cards also. (It didn’t find anything since my shooter had not hit record on the camera in in the first place.)
John
John Lenihan
LeniCam Video Productions
https://www.lenicamvideoproductions.com -
I had the battery pop off during a recording one time. But it was an 8 min clip and it did not span two cards. After the battery came off I turned the cam off, put the battery on, and turned the cam on. After doing its thing for about 2 min, I got a message that said something about attempting to repair the clip. I selected yes. After two minutes it was fixed and all my footage was there.
-
Thanks for the note. My camera did that same thing but when I pressed the button saying yes to repair/recover nothing else happened and it froze the camera from doing any other work. So I finally gave up and pressed no to recover/repair. Wonder if I should have just waited for a couple of minutes because it was working or something.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up