This week, I learned a potentially disastrous lesson the easy way.
Hired a shooter for our gig in Anaheim, and told him I would provide SD cards, so that we wouldn't have to do a round of copying, etc., on site. He was shooting with Sony FX30 and FX3.
When I got home, and opened up the SD cards, I noticed that the expected video files were not there, but there were gigantic .RSV files instead. Upon investigation it turns out they are the files that Sony cameras create if there is some kind of power failure or the camera crashes. They will not natively play back as video files, however, unless they are converted. All the utilities I found on the web were paid, so I reached out to our guy to see if he had any thoughts. (2/9)
Well, he very kindly sent me a free utility that his AI agent, Hermes, found for him on GitHub, and I duly dragged/dropped the files for repair. However, the resulting MP4 files that appeared on the SD card could not be played back. After taking a break, I texted him and told him this, and he said you mean even from the copies, and I said, what do you mean the copies, and he said wait… you haven't copied the video files off the SD card yet? (3/9)
I hadn't, not having ever thought this was a big deal. I assumed that SD cards are basically like tiny SSDs and can be treated the same way. (4/9)
He told me I should immediately copy the files off the card, and not only just copy the video files, but to copy the entire file structure to an external drive and never touch the contents, or attempt to view the contents of the SD card before making a copy. This was highly alarming because I have only ever just grabbed video/photo files off SD cards when copying. Then he mentioned that I should also use a checksum when copying. (5/9)
He told me to look up DIT best practises, whereupon I learned exactly what he was talking about. (6/9)
He then mentioned (or just found out himself) that the SD cards I had provided him were too slow for Sony cameras. This is a guy that owns an Alexa and a Komodo, a sprinter van for all his shooting gear, and has Netflix/Disney cinematography credits, so I would have thought he'd've known that in advance. If he was in any doubt, he should've suggested an alternate path on site before shooting. (7/9)
But in the end, thanks to his help, I was able to copy all the files, use the free utility to repair them, and everything was saved.
But I learned the following:
When hiring a shooter, absolutely send a picture of the SD cards and or find out what the recommended specs are for the cameras they plan on using… (8/9)
•It's ill-advised to use the same SD cards in different brands of camera, because even when they get formatted, the file structures can be different, in spite of the fact that there is a standard that's supposed to govern them all.
•You're supposed to 100% copy the entire SD card file structure before even playing back any files.
•Checksum utilities are expensive, but of course Resolve can do it, even on the free version, which is the final nail in the coffin of me needing to switch (9/9)
@samvarma guh i need to learn davinci too
@samvarma The well kept “secrets” in the industry. Glad in the end it all turned out well and that now you know that bit more!