Has anyone else had this happen?

[sog1927]

I had an "interesting" malfunction occur on my X1D, and I was wondering if anyone had seen anything similar. I took the camera on vacation along with the 30mm and the 90mm and an excessive assortment of CF lenses. The camera had two SanDisk Extreme Pro 256GB SD cards and was set to "backup". At the end of the trip, I decided to shot a short video clip (something I've never done before).

Images imported fine into Phocus.

I went out shooting a little bit this afternoon - every 3FR file shot after the video segment seems to be corrupt. Phocus won't open them. Nothing that uses the Apple RAW library can open them either. The files are definitely *there* - they can be listed and copied just fine - but neither they nor copies of them can be understood by anything I have that knows how to read a .3fr file.

The previous images on the card can still be processed.

Firmware level is 1.21.0, so old firmware shouldn't be an issue.

So, a couple of questions for the community:

1) Has this happened to anyone else?
2) On the off chance that the corruption is just something in the header of the files, I don't suppose there's a reference for the format of 3fr and fff files, is there? (I have been a software engineer since the late 70s and am not the least bit shy about performing binary file surgery with a hex editor). Obviously, I'd work on the copies.

Thanks in advance!

Steve

PS. Never, ever shooting video again.

[BillW]

I have never shot video and no plans to do so. Perhaps Wade with Hasselblad will read this thread and make a suggestion.

[sog1927]

I have never shot video and no plans to do so. Perhaps Wade with Hasselblad will read this thread and make a suggestion.

Never done it before either - but I was on vacation and I figured "it's the end of the day, why not shoot a 'home movie' to cap off the day?"

Let's just say that I feel no need to book a ticket to Cannes or Sundance

I got ahold of the SanDisk data recovery program just to see if it could make sense of the data on the card. It's been running for 11 hours now on an 8-core MacBook Pro and tells me it's "20% done". I see a consulting opportunity there. 

I suppose it's possible some hardware component decided to pack it in concurrently with my cinematic efforts, but that seems awfully coincidental to me. There were no error messages from the camera when I shot.

[boinger]

I had something similar happen to my H6d images.

Everything in the card got corrupt. I believe it was due to a slow card so the write speed couldn't keep up and ended up corrupting everything. I was never able to recover the images.

All these issues make me take pause and wonder if I should go with the gfx.

[sog1927]

I had something similar happen to my H6d images.

Everything in the card got corrupt. I believe it was due to a slow card so the write speed couldn't keep up and ended up corrupting everything. I was never able to recover the images.

All these issues make me take pause and wonder if I should go with the gfx.

Well, that's why I was careful to use a card that was explicitly recommended in the manual (SanDisk Extreme Pro), but I it's certainly possible.

I have a smaller card that I'm going to low-level format with the SD card association formatter (and then format in-camera). I'll do some shooting today to see if the camera is working right.

The camera itself has been an absolute delight to use, by the way. I don't think any digital camera would be as reliable as V system gear (not a single repair in 30 years of use), though.

[sog1927]

The smaller card worked fine, so I think the camera is okay. The SanDisk recovery program is still running (claims to be 66% done at this point). It'll be interesting to see how the larger card works after a low level reformat.

[Mellan Wilde]

The smaller card worked fine, so I think the camera is okay. The SanDisk recovery program is still running (claims to be 66% done at this point). It'll be interesting to see how the larger card works after a low level reformat.

Can you read the video now? I plan to take a video, i hope it wouldn't be an issue for me.

[Mellan Wilde]

Here is what I found in the manual:

The camera is only able to read and write to storage media that have been formatted correctly. New cards sometimes have no formatting, or you might want to convert a card that is currently using a format that the camera cannot read. In either case, you must reformat both SD cards within the X1D Camera to be able to use the SD Cards.

[sog1927]

The smaller card worked fine, so I think the camera is okay. The SanDisk recovery program is still running (claims to be 66% done at this point). It'll be interesting to see how the larger card works after a low level reformat.

Can you read the video now? I plan to take a video, i hope it wouldn't be an issue for me.

Don't know yet - the SanDisk recovery program is still running. It looks like it's going to take 5-6 days total to recover the card. Speaking as someone who does high performance computing as his day job, I think this code needs some work 

[sog1927]

Here is what I found in the manual:

The camera is only able to read and write to storage media that have been formatted correctly. New cards sometimes have no formatting, or you might want to convert a card that is currently using a format that the camera cannot read. In either case, you must reformat both SD cards within the X1D Camera to be able to use the SD Cards.

I *did* format the failed card in camera before use.

[jwillson]

You didn't mention in your original post, or maybe I didn't understand...

Since you had the second slot set to "backup", do you have the same issue with pictures from the second slot?  Are they corrupted also?  If so, it seems unlikely that it's a card issue, but if they are clean I'd probably throw away the primary card (or return it if it's new) and get another, regardless of whether the "recovery" process manages to salvage the card. 

If both cards are corrupt, I have no idea what is going on.  I have not run into your particular issue, but I've never tried shooting video on my X1D.

[sog1927]

You didn't mention in your original post, or maybe I didn't understand...

Since you had the second slot set to "backup", do you have the same issue with pictures from the second slot?  Are they corrupted also?  If so, it seems unlikely that it's a card issue, but if they are clean I'd probably throw away the primary card (or return it if it's new) and get another, regardless of whether the "recovery" process manages to salvage the card. 

If both cards are corrupt, I have no idea what is going on.  I have not run into your particular issue, but I've never tried shooting video on my X1D.

I failed to mention it in the original post - I try to RTFM as a matter of policy  . I run the support organization for a rather specialized software vendor, so users who don't follow instructions are a pet peeve of mine.

As for the backup card - neither the video nor any of the files recorded afterwards are even on the backup card. They're not corrupted, they're just not there (as if the camera firmware gave up trying to write them after hitting an error on the primary). I don't care about the video, because I was just clowning around when I shot it, but there are about 20 shots that seem to be gone. There are appropriately named files of the correct length with the right timestamp on the card, but both Phocus and the Apple RAW library fail to process them.

I kind of wonder if the card just wasn't fast enough to handle the video stream - it seems to be too much of a coincidence otherwise. If I try video again, I think I'll do it on a separate card and remove/reinstall the battery when I'm done.

The recovery process was spectacularly unsuccessful - the card recovery program (after 4 days of crunching) managed to "recover" the good files (which I had already imported into Phocus anyway). It silently failed to recover the corrupted ones. No indication of any errors, it just didn't recover them - even though the files are present according to normal Unix utilities. So, not only excruciatingly slow, but completely useless as well. 

[sog1927]

Just a quick update: After reformatting, I tried the cards in camera and got "card too slow" errors. Testing with the sdspeed utility on MacOS shows a maximum write rate on the cards of 12.48 MB/s. I think the cards are counterfeit. I bought them through an Amazon seller (which was pretty foolish on my part). Apparently there's something of an epidemic of counterfeit SanDisk cards out there, so be careful. Amazon is refunding the purchase price.

[boinger]

Yea I only buy memory cards from BHP or Adorama.