A 8GB SxS card full shows 6GB only
 

When one of my 8 Gb SxS card was full, the PMW-EX1 shift automatically to the second card. So I would expect the full card to hold 8Gb worth of clips.
But after copying the full contents of the disk in my PC hard drive the BPAV directory is only 6 Gb. What a surprise !! Why dont I have 8 Gb ? Or does the EX1 make the shift from one card to the next card way before it is full ?

I suspect that the advertised 8 Gbyte size is when the card is unformatted, much like a hard drive. When my 16 Gbyte cards are full I'm only getting around 14.5 Gbytes of actual transferred data. The fullness of the cards seem to vary depending on your camera setup, shooting mode, etc.

- Don

But can someone tell me more about this mystery of a 8Gb card being full after 6 GB of data?
When I start a new card, using the format HQ 1080p30, the camera displays that I have 28 minutes of available shots on the 8 Gb card. Is this 28 minutes limit associated with a total of 8 Gb or 6GB?
What settings exactly condition the fact that all the clips hold 6 GB or 8 GB ?

Francois,

If you look on the memory card box it says that 7.4 GB is available from the factory. It's just like how a DVD-R is advertised as 4.7GB but it's really 4.3ish. And depending on the host device this could be more or less. What really matters to all of us is does your 8GB card hold 25 minutes in HQ mode and 35 in SP mode? If so then it is working as advertised.

If it's giving you 28 minutes of recording time then you are getting 3 bonus minutes...that's how I look at it, LOL.

Storage manufacturers marketing department began cheating capacity figures over a decade ago. Yay for marketing!

1024 Bytes=1 Megabyte
1024 Megabytes=1 Gigabyte

So a true 8GB should be 8,589,934,592 Bytes. Marketeers being what they are, decided to round each figure to 1000. So 8,000,000,000 Bytes is 1 Gigabyte in their lala land. The computer of course doesn't fall for this and shows the true figure of available space at 7.45 Gigabytes. Then you have to account for the filing system, which also has to occupy data space on your Expresscard.
The file system is necessary, or else your data would resemble a large library packed to the roof with no shelves, every books pages torn out, with every page chopped up into individual letters, and then mixed in a cement truck and poured evenly into the library. Now try to find "War And Peace" to read within your lifetime :)

So you end up with about 6GB or so after all that.

Which is quite not true. You end with more. But Sony has kept some reserved space. On a French Forum someone told that, even if the card is labeled 8Go, some prints on the card box say it can contain around 6Go of data, not more.
Keep in mind that even if the space is not full 8Go, the recording time annonced is right anyway. So, the camera exactly knows how much of the card it can use and, as said sony, you will have you full 28mins of recording (depending on the mode you are shooting).

Now which part would be not quite true?

:)

the part "not quite true" is that it's not just a mathematical problem that 8Go = 6Go when formated. Sony also reserve some space - which does not change the recording length of the card.
Sorry if it was rude on you. No offense.

All the above said, my 8GB cards are seen as well over 7GB capacity under Windows, when full - never seen 6GB.

I understand, maybe the english phrase would be "not the whole story" if have additional information to add :)