After years of using EX3 without a glitch yesterday I could not shoot as I was getting 'Unsupported media' message with all 5 of my Sony SXS cards. tried factory reset, did not help.
Any idea what is wrong, please?

Just discovered that my Mac will nor recognize the cards as well. The format option is greyed and cannot be executed both on the Mac as well as my WX3. It goes for all 5 cards I have. All original Sony SxS cards.
Please. any idea?

thats scary, i use SxS cards too and thought they were bullet proof!!

Might it be a virus?

Not likely all five cards are bad and the fact that your Mac will not see them means something else is going on, here.

Is the record lock tab ON by any chance?

Found this article which may be of some help... or not.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1847

Is there a chance the media cards were affected by a magnet...or electricity? Or...?

Try to analyze what happened to them since the last time they were (successfully working) in the camera. The mathematical probability for all 5 to malfunction at the same time without some other causative factor is extremely remote. Could they have gone into a reader that was somehow mis-wired and 'zapped' them? Did they go through an MRI? or experience an EMP? Did they all transfer their previous data successfully?

You can never rule out alien probes I suppose...

Seriously though, with all of them going bad at once, it would seem that they had to have all been subjected to similar damage (I'm assuming they can't even be reformatted?)

Thanks for replies.

No, nothing happened in terms of external influences. I prepared camera for the shoot, all good. Switch the camera off until the shoot is ready, I guess an hour. Shooting is ready, I switch the camera on and... as described. All five cards reports unsupported media.

My Mac(s) both of them recognize the card when inserted, but nothing can be done with them. I hoped to format them in XDCAM Browser, but format option is grayed. I am talking about MacBookPro, so I am not using any external reader.

So the camera must have get broken and messed up all the cards.

Funny thing is that I goggled the net and forums, no similar case. Nothing to learn about this issue.

So I guess gremlins must have invaded my camera.

I live in Sri Lanka now. There is one service centre here, have no idea how good are they. Will go there tomorrow. I will call a priest first to recommend me to the Big Boss. If this fails, will go to a voodoo shaman.

And then I see Americans can buy a new Canon 100 for 99 $ monthly installments. Boy, how do I become an American ;-)

Anyway, thank you all for your input.

Check your contacts and your humidity. It may be necessary to clean your contacts on both your SxS and your camera. Sometimes the "Nintendo" trick is all you need.

yes,you are right. humidity is high here, but it can hardly happen to the camera, cards and two laptops at the same time.

just to give an example how crazy this can be. at one time my main machine mac pro started to restart for number of times when i would switch it on in the morning, before starting to work normally. no one knew why. my 15 years old daughter told me to dust it if from inside. i thought it was nonsense, but she was actually right. a thin layer of dust was there, but the problem was that the dust drew humidity from the atmosphere and become wet. as such, it was causing some contacts and machine would automatically switch off and restarted. after several attempts, the machine would raise the temperature inside the chassis that dried off humidity. and then it would work flawlessly. i cleaned the dust and - problem solved. perhaps someone somewhere would find this story useful.

thanks for your input.

The best electrical contact cleaner there is is called Caig.

More than just a cleaner is restores the conductivity between connections. You might try spraying some on a Q tip and then drawing this wet across the end of each of the cards so that it drips down. Insert one so that the Caig reaches the fingers inside the camera. Do that part a few times pulling the card in and out..

Home of DeoxIT and HAND-E-GLOVE - CAIG Laboratories, Inc. (http://www.caig.com/)

Another (remote) possibility is the cards have somehow become uninitialized. If something happened in the camera... firmware crash or corruption... during the last format you mentioned.

The FAT table may now be damaged. The cards themselves would still be fine, though.

Try this. BTW: I do not own a mac so I can only relate what to try on a PC.

Load one of the cards into the SxS reader and connect to the PC.

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

See if the card shows up and how it's being seen. Is it asking the card be initialized? If so, do it and then do a format from the PC using Clip Browser.

If it works it means the cards are OK, but there is still an issue with the camera. Try installing the current firmware for your model or at least re-install what you have now from a new file off the Sony site.

Then try a card format with the newly installed firmware.

@George ... On the Mac, if the low level disk volume system won't recognize it, the OS puts up a dialog box that lets you eject or initialize. Also, the OP said that the Mac in fact accepts it and mounts it and was going to format it using XDCAM Browser but that the Browser would not allow it.

It does sound exactly like the media is write protected.

Now this is totally crazy. I put the card in my Mac. Recognized by computer but not XDCAM Browser. I copied to the card some old BPAV files. Copying went with no problem. open XDCAM Browser. It reads the card, I can play clips from it. But can not format it.

Put the same card to camera - unsupported media. What about this?

I am clueless. Why the browser reads the card, I can delete selected file from it, copy another file to it, but can not reformat it?

Oh boy, am I frustrated.

Update or replace the camera's firmware as I suggested and see if that helps.

I'd also remove and re-install Clip Browser from scratch.

OK. How do I install new firmware? Any link? Never did it. Still have original firmware the camera came with. Which is V1.04_0084
Thanks.

Tried to find the firmware, but it seems it is not available on the net. Anyone can direct me to the link I can download the firmware from.
Thanks.

Here is the link but it appears yours is too old to update without contacting Sony for some further assistance.

Perhaps someone who owns an EX3 will offer some help on what needs to be done for you to upgrade.

Sony | Micro Site XDCAM (http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/micro-xdcam/resource.downloads.bbsccms-assets-micro-xdcamex-downloads-XDCAMEXFirmwareUpgrade.shtml)

Upgrading to at least V10 will let you use the cheaper SDHC cards should you come to find out, though I doubt, your five SxS cards are toast. Check this discussion for more information.

Keep us informed.

Well, the camera is at only authorized service centre here. no sound from them for almost a week.... am skeptical... will share info once I get my camera back.

I am sure this is not the problem but I seem to remember (insert sound of clearing cobwebs) something about if a card has DV files on it, that the XDCAM utilities are restricted. Something about this thread made me remember that. Not sure, it's an old memory. FWIW

OK just to conclude this tread. The camera came back today. It was at the repair shop from November. Apparently, for reason unknown, two boards had to be replaced. They could not told me why the boards died out. Quite spooky, as nothing unusual was done with the camera. Just died in the course of filming. Nothing I could think of could have sparkled this.

So, it is here, it works, I am more then a thousand $ lighter in my pocket... WTH. Sorry for not being able to provide some experience other could benefit from. Hope none other will have this experience.

I have heard rumors of people bricking their camera trying to update the EX-1 themselves.
I had this happen to me when i tried to update an earlier version.

Sony did get it back up and running in a few hours.
Could this have wrecked your camera?
unlikely Sony would say...

Long shot but.. where the cards used in 50mbps UDF file mode at all,in another camera.. PMW200 etc you would then get the un supported media message.. back in your FAT mode camera.. but this wouldn't kill any boards of course .. !!

No, no. One moment ll was fine, next one all the cards were gone. Well, actually they were not, as they are all healthy, now that boards are replaced. The camera jut did not see them m or rather not able to read or record onto them. Perhaps there was some sort of short circuit due to tropical humidity. Who knows.

Do you keep your camera in a air tight or sealed case?

I remember reading in this thread that some people thought these cases caused corrosion on the camera circuit boards by trapping condensation inside the case.

Just a thought...

No, I did not. Never mind, I guess things brake at one point. This was the case here. The good thing is that camera works as new now, so for some time I don't have to think of buying new one.