[David Blumenfeld]

They originally asked for it to be shot on xdCam 50 Frame Rate at 50i. As my camera doesn’t output that format, he said the AVCHD footage will need to be converted to XD Cam and left it up to me-whichvever I prefer to shoot. I like the look of progressive, but I know that PF isn’t true p, so just wondering if I’d be better with the 50i…thanks.

[David Blumenfeld]

HI.

Just starting to work on Avid with some C100 Footage. What is the best codec to AMA-Transcode to? DNXHD? XDCAM 35?
THanks!

[David Blumenfeld]

Hi. Did you figure out the jaggy lines problem on the Ninja2? I took mine to shoot today for first time and had same problem. db

david@blumenfeld.com

[David Blumenfeld]

Maybe contact Audacity to see why it’s not working or upgrade to latest Mac OS. I am on mountain lion…

This worked for me and saved me! Got most of the file back. Even though was saying nothing was there the file was intact. Basically the header that writes how big the file is and other info gets written last so it wasn’t written to the file. This system ignores that first part of the code and gives you back just the file…took some trial and error. Also there are some services that may be able to help retrieve if u can send them the card

[David Blumenfeld]

I picked this up off of another post after my batteries died on Zoom 4hn at the end of a 1 hour interview. IT WORKS! Even if it reads 0 on your card!

https://zoomforum.us/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17991

Dear H4n Mac users,

I thought all was lost. My batteries ran out during a shoot (phantom power drain horror) and when I got back to the studio the file came up as 0kB. But thanks to hints from forum member aumeta I’ve managed to recover it. I thought you all should know it can all be done on a mac using freeware. Follow these steps:

1. As soon as it happens remove the SD card and don’t use it. Unknowingly, I did use it, but for less time than I had previously recorded, so I was still able to rescue a large portion of my file. The SD card works a lot more like a tape than you might imagine. So when the batteries fail, it will start recording the next file at the start of the file that failed when your batteries went. This means if you’ve recorded, say, a 25 minute track, then the batteries have run out, and then you’ve recorded 2 more 2 minute tracks on the same card with new batteries, that you can still recover the last 21 minutes of your track. Clearly, it’s better to recover all of it, so next time, carry a spare SD card, and stop using the battery damaged one!

2. Back in the studio, plug in your SD card into the card reader so it mounts.

3. then open
Applications>Utilities>Terminal
What we’re going to do is unlock some advanced features on another utility Disk Utility

4. Once Terminal has started up copy and paste this in:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility advanced-image-options 1
then press return

5. Now open
Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility

6. Select your SD card in the list of drives, then click the New Image button

7. What we’re doing is making a copy of the entire SD card, including all the empty bits. This allows the audio program we’ll use which can read RAW files to read the entire disk image as one enormous audio file.
So, in the Image Format tab select “Entire Device” and have encryption set to “None” and save your disk image to a drive big enough to hold it.
instructions with pictures are here https://echoone.com/filejuicer/disk-images (ignore the last section about file juicer it will not help your problem

8. Now you’ve got a file that you can open in your audio program. One that can do it is a piece of freeware called Audacity which I found out from the forum post by johnsantic.
Download the Mac version from here: https://audacity.sourceforge.net/

9. Here I’ll adapt John Santic’s instructions from this post which saved some files for me which we’re’n’t 0kB (https://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14366)
“The normal way to load an audio file into Audacity is to use the typical “File > Open” command. But they have another way to read in a file in case the header is damaged or missing. This uses the “Project > Import Raw Data” command. The next step is to select your new disk image in the dialog box that opens.

10. Another dialog box should open which asks for audio parameters, this should be the same as the way in which you recorded the file:
In my case this was:

– Signed 24-bit PCM (ie 24 bit WAV on the zoom)
– Little-endian [this means the audio data in the file is least-significant-byte first – it will be the same whether you recorded at 24 or any other bit rate]
– 2 Channels (Stereo)
– Start offset = 910 [this is the normal size of an H4n header, you should also try 0 and 2 if you are at 24-bit, or 0, and 1 for 16-bit]
– Amount to import = 100%
– Sample rate = 48000

After you click “Import”, Audacity reads in the file. What you’ll probably find is large blocks of interference with audio files inbetween. If you find your lost recording, select that section, then use the command “File > Export” and save it under a different file name, with the same settings as your other original sound files. Joy! OK so you’ll probably lose a tiny bit at the end and at the start, but I’m sure you’ll live having recovered the vast majority of what you thought was lost forever

11. If you don’t find your audio file in there this time do not despair. Instead just go back to the start of part 10 and enter in a different start offset (0, 1 or 2) and you’ll find a different portion of the audio you recorded will appear. I found my lost file on the second attempt when I set it to 0. Just keep on trying.

I thought I’d messed up the whole project. Now I’m full of the joys of life, and thought I should share it with you all.

Ta,

James

Top

zoom1061
Post subject: Re: Ran out of Battery and found only a 0Kb file? There’s hoPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:11 pm

new to this board

Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:12 pm
Posts: 1
I just wanted to affirm Jimmybulb’s post. Thank you! and to anyone else who did the behind the scenes work to make recovery possible, you rock! I spent 4 hours troubleshooting and downloading random freeware programs, but when I found this post, all was saved except about 15 seconds that were somehow corrupted. I ran the process twice through to see if the file would come out clean but it didn’t so I’m guessing somewhere in the process of my Zoom H2 becoming unplugged, the file became corrupted. I’m not really sure. I was recording a wedding and it finished. Because my batteries were dead, I had confidently plugged my zoom H2 into a power strip thinking it was the ultimate, safe source of power. Well, the sound board just happened to be plugged into this power strip and the sound engineer unplugged it after the wedding. The zoom power was cut off before I could stop recording. Note to self – set up at least 2 layers of good quality audio backup if possible.

A couple helpful notes.
1. Don’t stop trying if you get an audacity file that is ALL interference. You probably got the audio parameters wrong. The sample rate, offset, stereo or mono, little endian all seems to matter. I tried multiple settings before I got the right one and sometimes the audio came out as all interference (LOUD interference) or super slow low voices.
2. All the freeware recovery programs I tried didn’t do what I wanted. Most recover deleted files, pics, etc.. not fix audio files without a header.
3. I tried 0 for the offset, and it came out as pure interference. 1 and 2 both worked in my case. I was recording 16bit, stereo, at 44kHz.
4. DEFINITELY choose a low percentage to import to test first. Setting it at 5% for about 7.4GB of a card only took about 30 sec to process on my macbook pro.

Good luck!
Nick

[David Blumenfeld]

Hey Mark,

I actually just tried what you suggested and IT WORKED! It looks like the first few frames of the project were sort of pushed to the left and outside of the storyline (as it said)…By dragging it to the right a bit and adding some space to the beginning of the project, it is now able to copy….Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out!

David

[David Blumenfeld]

Hi Mark,

The interviews in this piece are compound clips, created via “sync”, and Plural Eyes, as I was using double audio. I have tried to break apart all of the compound clips in my project, but I’m still getting the message…Any other tips out there??

[David Blumenfeld]

Eric,

Yes, I tried that. I get this same message when I try to compound the clips: You are combining audio and video clips outside the primary storyline.The audio duration will be modified to conform to video frame boundaries.

When I do it, it the clips get shifted out of sync.

[David Blumenfeld]

Thanks. I’m not sure if that was the problem. The message I mentioned comes up when I select All and Copy the project, not when I’m trying to paste it…So I think it has something to do with the fact that I had compound clips and then broke them apart and changed some things…

Still don’t know solution, though…
db

[David Blumenfeld]

I should also mention, In each sequence, I was working with compound clips which were slowing me down, (also why I was breaking projects up) and I broke the clips apart…