Problem with 2 16GB Cards Failing On Set

[donovangreene@mac.com]

I worked as a DIT on a high end commercial production last week, and had issues with 2 16GB RED CF cards failing in the field. We had no problem until two days into the shoot. Late in day 2 one card came out of our B camera and was placed into a card reader, it didn't mount on the desktop. We put the card back in the camera and nothing showed up. I contacted RED and sent the card back for data recovery the following morning. The next shoot day, day 3, everything was back to normal. We were shooting with our A camera and mid way through the morning the camera recorded three clips to a card just fine, and then on the fourth clip it froze during it's POSTING operation for about ten minutes. I hit record again to see if I could end the cycle and then after no response hit Power. That card was not readable by a card reader or the camera again. I sent that back to RED last week.

We had two different cards fail in two different camera bodies. The weather was mid sixties, no rain. One of the cards never reached the flash card reader in the computer, so it wasn't a Lexar card reader malfunction.

Red has been recovering the data for the last week, but I need to figure out what happened. RED hasn't figured out what happened.

Any ideas, comments, similar experiences would be much appreciated.

[J. Eric Camp]

What build is the camera?
What version is the CF module in the cameras?
Was Max checked or unchecked?
Were you recording audio?
Were you providing Phantom power?

[Andrew Walker]

I haven't had problems like this with my 16GB cards. But sometimes when I swap cards I have to power down the camera and power it back up with the card in the slot for the card to show up. Also the cards seem to only go up to 105fps in 2K 2:1 RC 36, the drive can go up to 120fps in this same mode. I was lead to believe that the cards could operate at the same speed as the drive.

[Evin Grant]

The 16GB cards are great but are much more sensitive than the 8s to formatting and data issues. I had one of mine take a crap during a music video. It did the neverending "Post" trick. Luckily we just re-shot the lost takes. Since then I've formatted the card in a computer and then the camera and everything seems fine. It may be a good idea to low-level format the cards every few weeks just to be safe.

[Brent@RED]

As has been mentioned in a few other posts, the vast majority of the time when something like this happens, the smoking gun is the external card reader. Or, on much rarer occasions, a pin being bent on the internal card reader/writer. Being part of the loop on the conversations you have had with tech support here, Donovan, that is what we figured out most likely happened.

Looks like one time the card was fine in the camera, then put in external reader, the damaged occurred. Looks like the other, it hung on POST then you tried on camera and external reader again, and the card was damaged. In both cases, the reader was involved.

CF cards are very, very reliable. If there is an issue, look to your readers first. One that is faulty or a low-end (eg, non-UDMA approved) can corrupt footage. We have seen quite a bit.

BC

[Andrew Walker]

Brent what about the slower than normal fps? Is 105fps 2K 2:1 RC 36 top speed for the 16GB cards...at RC 36? I can get 120fps if I shoot in RC 28.

[Brent@RED]

Page 28 of Ops Guide - Framerate table :)

16 GB CARD: REDCODE 36, 2K 2:1, 100 fps

BC

[Sidney L. Plaut]

brent what is best cf reader to buy? - speed and "not cf card damaging" wise...

[donovangreene@mac.com]

The external card reader was used was a Lexar with firewire 800 on the back, I don't have the model number. I did a visual inspection of the pins and they appeared fine, that reader was also used to download several other CF cards before and after that issue happened without any problems.

On the second card that was problematic it recorded three takes with no problem, and then froze during a post error on the fourth take. The card was not removed from the camera between any of these takes. There was no way for the card to have bent a pin between takes three and four. The camera was rebooted and the card could not be read. THEN the card was put into the external card reader and that card reader could see there was a drive attached, but could not read it.

I can see that the external card reader MAY have been a problem in the first CF card issue, but fail to see how it could have been a part of the problem with the second CF card issue.

Evin- When you say you are formatting in a computer, what is the process exactly? What do you mean by low-level format every couple of week?

I was shooting 24 frames, max was selected, it was build 17.3, I was not recording audio or phantom power.

Thanks again for all the responses. I'm just trying to figure this situation out so I know what to tell the client and the production company so they will feel comfortable shooting RED again in the future.

Thanks
Donovan Greene

[Brent@RED]

I always recommend: http://www.lexar.com/readers/pro_udma_reader.html

BC

[donovangreene@mac.com]

That's the card reader I was using.
I will also note that after the second CF card issue, we only shot with the RED DRIVE.

[Mike Prevette]

I've blown up one of those card readers, although they are the most stable of the bunch. I still use them but there is room for error when handling any camera media.

[donovangreene@mac.com]

How did you "blow up" one of the lexar readers?

Did the problem affect the cards you were downloading?

[Ariana]

I had problems once with a bad firewire 800 cable causing the reader to dump garbage into our footage. The cable also damaged the reader and the card that was plugged into it and another brand new reader.

[donovangreene@mac.com]

What was wrong with the cable? Were the pins bent, was it cut in any way? How did you figure out the cable was bad?

Thanks

[Ariana]

What was wrong with the cable? Were the pins bent, was it cut in any way? How did you figure out the cable was bad?

Thanks

I don't know what was wrong but it was evil. After we got the the new firewire reader I tested a card fine with the cable that came with new reader. I took the reader to DIT's laptop but used the bad cable that was still on his laptop and started having problems again. We were really puzzled but the DIT somehow narrowed it down to the cable by elimination.

He knew to check the cable because guy he worked with had a bad cable problem a few months earlier.

[Petros Nousias]

Ive been using this reader for some time now and had it replaced twice because the eject button was stuck inside and wouldnt come out. A week after the third replacement came the same thing happened! I gave up, I still use it but I am about to carve it so I can remove the card manually...

[Mark Pugh]

There's always a tendency from Red here to blame card readers. I, like Evin, had a card die (the first time it was used, stuck in "POST", never was able to re-formatted.
Beware the short 90-day warranty offer, which does seem a little short, given the huge levels of confidence Red has in their cards, individual testing and quality control they have, and the high prices they ask for the cards.
Test cards after you buy them.

[Kaku Ito]

Not directly related to the CF card issues, but I want to share about firewire issues from many various firewire devices that I came across.

There are chances with firewire cable malfunctioning with poor quality. You might have noticed that some firewire cables have some ferrite blocks close to the connectors. That is to eliminate the noise on the signal. So be aware with cables (I remember saying this to people with HVX200 to connect to Macs, but not only the cable, the firewire jack on Macs can be worn out).

[Eli Jarra]

Evin- When you say you are formatting in a computer, what is the process exactly? What do you mean by low-level format every couple of week?

Thanks
Donovan Greene

I usually do this in the disk utility under OSX. Under Erase, select MS-DOS, then re-format...you can also do a low-level format within the same utility.

[donovangreene@mac.com]

RED has been able to recover "most" of the footage from the cards, which is great news. They did an AWESOME job of stepping up to the plate and paying for the data recovery themselves, which is a real testament to their customer service.

As far the culprit, I'm nearly positive it is an issue with the 2 16GB CF cards and not the card reader. As soon as there was an issue with the first card I recorded media to the other 7 cards on our B camera and successfully downloaded all 7 via the card reader to my computer. The 2nd card never touched the card reader until after it had failed to post or be read by the camera itself.

I'm sure the 16GB cards will be fantastic in a few months, but after reading that Evan had the same issue with a 16GB card will make me steer productions away from using them for the next few months. Even though the failure rate with the cards is a very small percentage, any failure that can be avoided should be. For now it's 8GB CF cards and the hard drive for me.

Thanks for everyone's responses. And thanks to RED for doing a FANTASTIC job recovering what could be salvaged from the cards.