Life of CF cards

[Mathew Medeiros]

Hi all,

I have lost much sleep and my entire Thanksgiving weekend trying to repair/salvage clips and trouble-shoot the source of my problem...

I have a question to anyone who is experiencing or has experienced random corruption on their footage shot on CF cards. The two cards in question shot one after the other, downloaded on two different occasions with different card readers, and transcoded from the copies showed different clips with a dropped frame and what has been described as "tire tracks" overlayed a frame. We thought we had this problem solved by replacing the CF module on the camera and while it went away for a while, it just came back on this shoot.

I've very nearly ruled out the card readers causing problems for a few reasons: both readers are high-speed, one being an ExpressCard reader that's never showed signs of failure before this. The other is the much-acclaimed Lexar FW800 reader which has also never showed signs of failure. The cards in question have been shot in the middle of the day, and everything before and after it have been ok; so for now we have ruled out the downloading hardware. I haven't ruled the camera out yet.

So, does anyone have evidence to these cards having a life to them? I know about the theoretical, but I am looking for practical problems anyone has had with their cards themselves. I've seen dropped frames before, but not showing up on different clips on a second download. The cards in question are some early-run 8GB CF cards.

 

[Jamie Havill]

Hi Matthew,

Have you tried replacing your firewire cables? I seem to remember someone having a problem with corrupt R3D's from compact flash and it turned out their cables were bust.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I use Red 8GB CF cards extensively since two years now because the RedDrive is not secure for me. The first 10 of the CFs have been formatted 500 times now and treated not with much respect. I never had a drop-out, nothing. IMO, Red's 8GB CF cards are a very reliable medium.

I use Nextos for downloading and find them very reliable too. I would be surprised if your error comes from the CFs.

Hans

 

[Frank Cueto]

This is happening to us fairly frequently on a local 2 camera production. Color tire tracks is a great way to describe it. some days we have many, some days we have none. And ALL our hardware is the same. Only diference is that some days we are on exteriors under rain, using hoods on our cameras. but even on days that we are on set we get those tire tracks drop outs.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If multiple cards are giving problems as well as more than one reader, I would seriously think about a faulty CF module in the camera. Definitely contact RED to see if they can help you evaluate the cards and camera CF module. I have had CF cards go bad, I have bought some Lexar cards that were dead right out of the package. Just like any other component, they can be defective, be damaged or wear down over time. All my RED cards have been good, even ones that are about 2 years old. All my Lexars have been good as well, except for the couple faulty ones I just mentioned and those had problems right out of the box or within a couple uses after.

 

[Colin Hubick]

We have about 200 cards that we bought over 2 years ago, and out of those I remember only 2 or 3 cards that we had problems with. Even now we use and reuse the cards extensively, and have not had any problems in the last year.

cheers
Colin

**GO RIDERS**