Hi all!

Last weekend I was shooting a music video using my HPX 171 with a 32GB P2E card from maxell and a 250GB firestore. At the end of the day (3 AM) I inserted the P2 in the cam and connected the firestore to check some of the footage. To my big surprise and disappointment (which led to anger) I found the P2 card empty. I know that the material was on the card because I kept checking what was shoot. At the end of the day I checked again and also deleted a couple of takes I found useless - then I took the card out of the cam.

Any ideas as to what could have gone wrong? Anything? Is there a scenario where a P2 card would automatically format?

Later on I tried to shoot whit the card and everything was alright. Tried the same scenario and nothing got erased...

I never delete any takes from the P2 card. I go back - copy everything into the editing workstation Hard-disks, then delete the copied takes that I don't want.

I noticed your P2 card is Maxell. I have never used any 3rd P2 cards, other than Panasonic's originals.

There are things that can lead to it appearing to be empty, when it's not. For example, if you've changed the thumbnail display to show "same format clips" or "marked clips", and there aren't any, then the card will show no thumbnails. Which might lead you to think that it's empty, when in fact it might be full of clips. Switch to "all clips" and it will show you what's on the card.

@Ting: yes, neither do I, but I needed some space because I thought that I was gone shoot some more but then didn't...

Hi Barry! Yes I've gotten my self scared once with that :) But no, on this occasion it was deleted for sure because it showed the whole 35 minutes of recording time left... Anyway since this happened I've shoot lots with the card and nothing bad happened. But still, I am a bit worried - don't want it to happen again.

You might accidentally hit the wrong button on the camera? "Format" instead of "Delete"? That's why I always bring enough P2 cards along for a shoot to ensure that I never need to delete footage during the actual shoot. So far, I have never had any problems with my P2 cards.

I Agree with TingSern,

Never "delete" anything untill after downloading card to another drive, that's a simple rule I've used for some years.
sometimes you can even salvage some part of an unwanted clip/out take for use.

PS, good advice from Barry too.

Cheers