Almost made a terrible mistake. :o(
 

Hey guys. Hopefully you won't make this mistake.
I recently shot a wedding and I was using 2 Canon 7D's.
When I got home, I downloaded all my cards onto my computer. 6x16 GB
And I had to format the cards for another shoot coming up.
Later I checked my videos and noticed I was missing 1 whole card of data.
The bridal preparation.
And then it struck me what happened.
I was copying the cards into 1 folder and it suddenly gave me the message that the
files are already on the computer, so I didn't copy them anymore and formatted the card.
But the problem was that I was shooting with 2 7D's and they are using the same file numbering and there was an overlap of the same name, but different video.
Thank god I was able to download the cards during the weddingday on a laptop so I managed to get all the videos, but it's something you really have to watch out for.
Just a tip.
I have been looking into changing the file naming, but couldn't find a solution to give them a different or unique numbering. Anyone an idea ?

Physically labeling the cards themselves should help a great deal. Take a Sharpie (a popular marker pen) and write 1, 2, 3 etc. in large print on the face of each card. That way if you get that message again you'll stop and think, "wait, I know I haven't done this one yet."

Page 80 of the instruction books shows how to sequentially number multiple cards

As Chris says, all my cards are numbered. I can see your problem, though, with two cameras and sequential numbering. What you might do next time is set one camera to start over at zero, and let the other one continue as is and if it's far enough ahead you shouldn't overlap numbers again.

For awhile I was copying each card's files into a separate folder, but for me there's no need to do that. I'm very careful about reformatting cards and unless i really have to, I don't reformat until I've not only loaded the footage but converted to ProRes. That way if the drive I have the original on should die, I've got the ProRes. Then, as time permits, I back up all my original H.264 onto Blu-rays. When I'm out of town, I take my laptop and put everything on a portable USB drive.

Your near disaster illustrates one thing I've always said--the main difference between a professional and an amateur is that when the professional screws up, he catches it in time.

You can try this:

Rename the folder ON your CF card right before copying it to your hard drive. Like "Bart1", "Bart2", "Bart3" ect...

This does four things:
#1 - After you rename a folder on the CF card, the 7D and 5D will create a new folder to store new images/videos.

#2 - By just looking in the CF card, you can tell whether the footage is backed up or not. You can even check in-camera.

#3 - You'll avoid the duplicate files/folder problem.

#4 - Great way to quickly label your footage by naming the folders on the spot e.g. "Bart1 Preps, First Look", "Bart2 Ceremony, Cam1" ect...

This method, in addition to numbering your CF cards, should prevent most initial backup headaches. Hope that helps.

If you use Raymond's suggestion of renaming the folder ON your CF card with the Canon Plugin for FCP it might not work.

The plugin won't work if you rename the DCIM folder, it expects to see that as part of the file system and you'll get an error message stating that there is not a valid filesystem. Of coarse you can rename the folder one level up but then you need to pay attention to your file naming convention in the FCP plugin to make sure that you don't over-write files with already existing file names.

This is very similar for those using the XDCam EX workflow.

Thanks for the suggestions.
But I just don't understand why we can't change the name itself.
I do Still Photography on my Nikon D700 & Nikon D90.
I changed my file names to D700_****
So I know what pictures came from which camera.
Why can't we change our videofilenames on our 7D to 7D1_*** or 7D2_***
instead of MVI_***

worked with a photographer who did this, although he thought he had uploaded the card, and then went out and shot a wedding the next day over the card - wiped a LOT of his pictures.

He had to get all the wedding party/family all dressed up again weeks later and back to the hotel for posed & group shots (and champagne!) all to his expense!

quite scary!

I don't know about actually changing the file names using the camera itself, I can't imagine why you shouldn't be able to do that. But as far as changing the names you can do that quite easily there are just some rules to how you have to go about doing it.

The DCIM folder is not just a folder with files in it, its a filesystem and if you want to use the Canon "Log & Transfer" plugin for FCP then that filesystem has to be copied EXACTLY as it is named. However you can change the clip names individually or globally plus add comments to the already existing metadata that comes with the clip. Plus you can trim and exclude clips etc.. Another benefit to this workflow is that, although this plugin doesn't currently do this, is an assurance or confidence check. Because its a filesystem the plugin can evaluate the copy and make sure that there are no anomalies with the clip assuring you that its good to go before you delete anything.

So here's one way you might create a workflow that archives, encodes and renames. Start by doing as Chris suggested, name each CF Card, create a folder ARCHIVE, this is the place that you'll store your RAW files. Inside create another folder AR_RACE_01A.

AR identifies the folder so that you know it contains RAW files so if it accidentally gets moved you'll recognize what it is by this acronym, RACE in this example is the project name you'll be working on, 01 is the camera number it was shot on and the A is the card identifier. If you don't use multiple 7D's then obviously you can omit the last letter.

Copy the DCIM folder exactly as it is into this folder. You need to pay attention to this because ALL of these folders will be named the same from ALL cards so you need to make sure you placed it into the correct folder that you previously created.

People manage there capture scratch differently, I'm just going to mention how I do it. Once I have all of the cards transferred into the corresponding AR folders, in this case assuming that all the cards are for the same project, I open a new FCP project name it RACE (project name) and then save. This automatically creates a new corresponding folder in my capture scratch, launch "Log & Transfer" CAUTION if you have a CF Card mounted it will automatically appear in the L&T list, in my workflow I make sure there are no CF cards mounted - because I've already copied the contents into the ARCHIVE folders, so as a rule of thumb if any clips automatically appear in the L&T window I highlight them and click on the EJECT button which clears the list.

Then click on the button with the gear icon to add a custom path then navigate to the AR folder I want to encode, note, do not click on the DCIM folder itself, you must click on the AR folder that contains the DCIM folder for all of the clip in the DCIM folder to appear in the L&T window.

In the logging pain there is a drop down for NAME PRESET. Click on it and drop down to EDIT. There you can edit the parameters that make up your custom name. It is very flexible but you need to make sure that you specify a parameter that is unique to the clip your transferring, original name, time of day etc.. Otherwise the name becomes generic creating the possibility to overwrite already existing files in your capture scratch.

For example my custom naming parameters are:Reel (underscore)Original Name Partial Span. So what I get in this example is AR_RACE_01A_MVI_003. So at a glance I know where the original (RAW) clip is located, it was shot on camera 1, recorded on CF Card A and which clip it is. So if I were doing multiple CF cards they would all have a unique identifier, for example the next CF card would have been AR_RACE_01B_MVI_015 or AR_RACE_02A_MVI_001.

I've probably made this sound much more complicated than it is, after doing it a couple of times it becomes second nature and make it very easy to manage and more importantly know what you've copied and what you haven't. Anyway I hope this helps someone...