X70 issue - recording froze up
 

I would like you to inform you about a serious issue which happened with my X70:
Here goes:
I was recording a wedding simultaneously at both SDXC media cards. The cards of course meet the spec (SANDISK EXTREME UHS-I, U3). I recorded into XAVC-L, 50Mbpps, 1080p50, MXF wrapper. After about 40 minutes long shoot I hit the rec start /stop button to stop the recording, both record/standby indicators in the viewfinder started flashing until the battery died. I swapped the new battery pack and power it on, the camcorder gave me an option to recover corrupted video MXF files (not the file structure recovery option which can be found in menu). I did that, but after successful recovery I found out, that the entire take was gone on both cards.
Camera can't playback the video. The data is still in there, but since there's no correct metadata (MXF header, footer, etc), no one is not able to playback the video in the ordinary way.
I tried to recover it by a couple recovery tools, without any success. When I looked at the raw data sectors on the card (I used to do a file recovery for a living), I see some MXF structure without footer. But I don’t have idea how to create/recover correct MXF footer so far. The MXF is obviously not correct because of power loss.
I read about couple of an other guys have run into the exact same problem ( First gig with Sony PXW-X70, camera froze up and and would not record or turn off. ).
So it seems to be a firmware related issue. If you guys have any thoughts how to recover the video I will appreciated!

Thanks a lot in advance.

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Yowza, that's bad. You"d expect a dual recording option in a camera to be safe and then this happens. I hope you manage to rebuild the data on the card.

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Wow... sorry to hear about that Martin. I have had some strange issues with the X70 viewfinder getting stuck on expanded focus mode once and some other weirdness. It's enough to make me a bit worried about this camera's reliability.

I used to have an AX100 and that camera did freeze up on me once during a shoot and I was using a Sony brand approved card.

Have you tried contacting Sony?

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

The only time I've seen something similar to this on an X70 was with a colleague of mine who was shooting AVCHD and was using after market batteries that obviously didn't fit perfectly. A slight movement on the battery caused the issue. After the shoot we were able to replicate the issue by jiggling the battery and getting the camera to lock up. Luckily in this case we were able to recover the files.

Try these guys. They have some free diagnostic software, Mac, that you can download to look at your files and then it can tell you if they can recover them. They have written their own recovery software. If they don't already have XAVC covered contact them they are really helpful.

aero Quartet: Video Apps and Repair Service

Also read this from their blogs so you can see these guys know their business.

Not a complete failure » Blog Archive » Canon 5D Mk III video files playing only first second of audio and black image

Not a complete failure » Blog Archive » Why Recovered Videos won’t Play

The more clips they have to repair he cheaper it gets. Their pricing schedule is available here:

Movie Repair Service • Pricing

a frame grab of their pricing structure is attached

If you are on PC their technology is available through

MP4repair.org

We've shot countless hours now on two X70s without any issues, fingers crossed. Both cameras are using the only upgrade so far which is firmware v1.02. Good luck.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

This just happened to me last night! Could not recover the files.
Used X70 recover prompts, but at one point clicking OK had no response.
Also tried Sandisk recover utility.
I was using similar parallel card write, and a lower bit rate of 35Mbps. Installed v1.02 of firmware.

It happened once before, and X70 prompts did recover files.

Vincent
Bentley School

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Do all you guys have the latest firmware installed, I have shot a couple of dance recitals with my X70 using dual record AVCHD and have not had an issue, I have not installed the latest firmware and will not until we find out more about this issue. I am using sony 64GB UHS-I SDXC cards.

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Yes, have 1.02. Shot a hours with it ok though. This is intermittent.
Vincent

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Xavc or avchd?

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

XAVC 1080/30p 35Mbps.

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Sony batteries or something else?
I just looked and I've got 7x10 hours avchd, trancend uh3 cards, no issues. (knock on wood)

However, 95% of that using a/c power.
Pretty sure I'm v1.02 also. Hope this gets identified quickly.

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

I had a similar issue with the camera locking up after hitting stop/rec, and both card icons flashing as if they were saving, but they never stopped. I had to pull the battery to get it working again. Didn't lose any video on the good card though. Some guys here supposed I had a bad card causing this, so I pulled one and put in a new and haven't had any issues since. Same dual card recoding with XAVC, 50Mbps, but 1080p30.

Still on Firmware v1.00

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

Thank you guys for supporting me. I used original battery, ran 1.02 firmware.
The thing is before the ceremony I had shot a couple takes only at card A, then I switched to simultaneous recording at both cards thus each cards had different amount of free space. Maybe that cause this issue? Who knows.

As I said before, it seems to be a firmware issue as far as I am concerned...
I am in touch with SONY support. So we will see, I will keep you posted.

Re: X70 issue - recording froze up
 

I am not an expert but when I read your first post, I immediately began to think "counterfeit cards."

I don't even know where to begin to check that, but I know that the high end Sandisk cards are the most counterfeited cards in the world, by at least 20 to one. Even the most legitimate retailers have been taken in.