unavailable footage on EX 1 SxS cards
 

I was on a shoot today. When I saw a message that my first card was full almost full, I hit the "switch cards" button without stopping the recording.

In the Sony Transfer software, there is a clip named ....129 on each of the SxS cards, however neither are available for download. One the first card, I get the message that the media is incomplete even though I can see it in the transfer software and on the second card, the message is "no media available." On the second card the clip is blank for the first half and I can see media on the second half.

This is about 8 minutes of video that cannot be reproduced.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

BTW, I have another shoot at noon tomorrow and need to delete the media before then for that shoot.

Diana

Hello Diana and welcome to DVINFO! I have moved your thread over to the XDCAM EX forum so it will be seen by the right people. The forum you originally posted in is aimed at the optical disc based XDCAM cameras.

In any case, do you have access to the camera so you can put both cards in the camera and connect it via USB? I think we had a similar situation to this with a crew at NAB with a clip spanning two cards. I recall being able to view the entire clip they shot by having the camera attached with both cards present at the same time.

Someone else with more EX-1 experience may be able to help you better than I.

Again, welcome and don't be a stranger.

regards,

-gb-

You have to learn how to transfer spanned clips. This is one of the complications. The first cards clip does not stand alone it seems to need the second cards part of clip to be complete.
Putting both cards in the camera and hooking the camera up to the computer try accessing the second cards clip for import, HTH

You need to use the clip browser software that came with the camera. Copy both cards to the same folder on your computer using clip browser and clip browser will automatically combine the two clips into a single clip. Also, you didn't have to manually switch cards(if you did). The EX1 will automatically switch to the other card slot when the first one gets full.

But will the fact that she "forced" the camera to switch slots before the end of the cards' recording time foul up the re-joining of the files? Just curious.

I may be wrong, but she shouldn't have buggered anything up by hitting the button. I would think that is what it is there for.

Yeah, but not in mid-recording....or did I miss something in the manual?

Well, is anyone going to try this? I might get my camera and force a switch in the middle of a shot and see if I can get it back together as one clip, unless someone here beats me to it. I might have already done it once since I did accidently hit the change slot button instead of the menu, and I don't think I had any problem with the clip. I should have some definitive results later tonight.

OK, here's the results. I recorded a single shot for 45 seconds. At 15 seconds in I switched from slot A to slot B, and then at 30 seconds in I switched back to slot A. I loaded the clips into clip browser and on the card in slot A it showed two clips, which obviously have a 15 second gap between them. I copied the clips using clip browser to a file I created on my iMac called test footage. The two files copied over to the iMac. Then I selected the B card which showed a single file and copied the file to the same test footage folder. The instant it copied over, ALL THREE CLIPS IMMEDIATELY BECAME ONE SINGLE 45 second clip. The result of this test is that it doesn't matter how the shot is split on the cards, clip browser knows how to put them back together seamlessly. Therefore Diana should have no problem putting two clips together even though she switched the card slots manually. I still think it would be better to let the camera automatically switch the card slots when one card gets full, but that's just so you don't have to give it a second thought while you are shooting

Patrick, just so I understand, did you copy "clips" as you said or did you move the BPAV folders? I want to be sure I understand your workflow on this.

Sounds like he used the Copy function in Clip Browser -- its smart enough to piece the bits together into one whole clip.

Whether you move/copy the BPAV folders from the SxS to another drive (before combining clips) is user's choice. Personally that is what I do, always good th have the SxS as a backup until you are safe.

Thanks
 

What happened was that by the time I did my third copy of the footage, I realized that the Sony Transfer Software recognized the clip in the logging area as part I and part 2 of the clip, however, it would not include the separate parts in the "select all" command. I had to specifically check off on the part 1 or 2 subclip for it to upload. In my second copy, I made subclips and gave them a new name. The subclips have all the footage. In the first copy, I just left them out. So, I eventually figured out what I had to do.

Thanks for all the responses.

Thanks to Greg for putting the post in the right place.

If you select the playable .smi file in Clip Browser it should gather all the parts IF you have all the folders added to the Clip Browser.