The magical vanishing footage.

Cracker Funk

Cracker Funk

This is a weird problem. I'm truly vexed. Anybody ever experienced anything like this?

Frankly, I don't think there's a solution to this mind-boggling issue, other than to reshoot. At the very least, though, maybe my woefull story can act as a warning to other DSLR users out there.

Todays lesson -- don't erase your card until you're ABSOLUTELY 100% CERTAIN that your footage has successfully been transferred to your hard drive.

I thought I had done that. On most days, I had been dumping footage via a USB card reader. On this occasion, I just connected the camera directly to the computer. I've done this before; it works the same.

Anyway, I open the folder I want to copy it to. I open the folder the footage is on. I highlight everything, drag and drop. Standard operating procedure.

As alway, the little window pops up to show that the files are being copied, and tells me it will be 10 minutes before it finishes. Ten minutes later, job done. I look in the destination folder -- all of the files are there. Thinking I have successfully dumped my footage, I go ahead and erase the card.

A day later, however, I try to open one of the files. Nothing. I try a different file. Nothing. None of them will open. I then notice that each of them is listed as being a 0KB file. What? I back up, and right-click on the folder, to view "properties". It says I've got so many odd files, amounting to a total of 0KB. What?!

Why did it take ten minutes to transfer 0KB of data? How the heck did this happen? I'm so confused.

We're scheduled to reshoot on Wednesday. Maybe, hopefully before then, somebody has heard of this problem and knows the solution. Any suggestions on how I can find this Whodini footage?
 
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No clue as to what happened, but this is why I use a number of smaller cards rather than one large card. We were involved in a discussion in another thread about how many memory cards one should have, and I think you had mentioned using one big card. You said you didn't understand the alternative, and I don't think I replied. But essentially, helping prevent problems like this is why.

I typically use up to 10 8G to 16G cards on any given project. I have them all labeled by letter. I'll log the day's material as to which card it is on (usually only 3 or 4 cards per day), then dump the cards onto the hard drive in the evening. But I won't erase them...yet. The following day I won't reuse the cards from the previous day; I'll use different ones. So after I dump the current day's footage I can go back and make sure the previous day's footage is still on the hard drive (and the backup hard drive). If not, chances are it'll still be on the card.

I realize this doesn't answer the question of your amazing missing clips. I have no idea, but it's happened to me before. Digits is the kwaziest people.
 
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Actually, this has happened to me, albeit in a different manner.

I have an email program called Eudora that I keep on my hard drive. It downloads my email from my server. If there's an attachment, there's a hyperlink with the file's name. If you click on it, it asks you what you want to do with the file (Open it or Save it).

If I click "Save" file, a windows box opens for options on where to save it to. The BOX THAT OPENS is to the folder that has all the email attachments. If I don't choose a different folder and I click "Save," everything seems normal. UNTIL I try to open that file. It will have a 0KB size. If, on the other hand, I save it to a different folder, I have no problem. It appears to copy over itself somehow without asking you if you want to "Replace" the existing file for some reason, and you end up with an empty file. I use Vista, btw.

Fortunately, I figured out what was going on and had the files (some MP3 files) resent to me and stopped doing it.

I have no idea WHY that happens, nor do I have a solution.

Really sorry to hear, man. Sucks.

-Charles
 
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Thanks, guys. Uranium, I can see your logic.

I guess I should've mentioned in my original post -- we didn't lose that much. The footage lost was B-Cam. We only need to reshoot two brief scenes, and only particular angles.

It could've been much worse. I actually feel rather fortunate that my misfortune wasn't so bad.
 
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The problem with reshooting is getting the lighting and positions right to match the past work. Good luck. Sorry to hear that you lost some footage. I have heard that if you don't reformat the card after removing footage it can go corrupt. I am not sure that is what happened to you. But I have heard that is another reason to use a smaller card versus a large one. Imagine if you had the 64 gig card and it went corrupt you could lose a ton of footage. It would be a disaster. Having more cards so you don't need to erase all the time is a good idea.

I had my computer catch a virus and lose all my files because of the need to format the drive and reinstall windows. Luckily I had dvds that I burned I used to rip and put back in for editing but that did make it so I could not redo color corrections that I all ready messed up on the DVD. Back up you files to an external drive and then remove it from your computer that way if you get a virus you don't have to start all over from scratch. I also had my old computer die completely due to the power connector in the back going out. I had to switch to a new computer. Luckily I had the film footage on external hard drive that time. I just had to redo some connections in my session files in the editing software.
 
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This is why I'm firmly in tape land, with no overwriting of tapes. Having been an IT professional for so many years, I'm flat out paranoid about data loss... and cards have seemed like a bad idea to me from the beginning. Their convenience and ease of transfer doesn't make up for the potential for these kinds of things happening.

I'm saddened that you lost stuff, glad that it won't be too hard to reshoot, and glad that you lost stuff so that you would learn the fragility of your hard work. We rely on these magical boxes and entrust all our efforts to them... the truth is, they are machines and are incapable of caring what happens to our footage. If they hiccup, we're screwed. The general rule of thumb for me is, Always backup your data as frequently as you are comfortable redoing the work you'd lose between backups.

With footage, I keep 3 copies at all times... tape, the project on disk, the project on an external disk. I never overwrite in case catastrophy strikes.

Kids: Stay paranoid, stay safe!
 
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This is why I'm firmly in tape land, with no overwriting of tapes. Having been an IT professional for so many years, I'm flat out paranoid about data loss... and cards have seemed like a bad idea to me from the beginning. Their convenience and ease of transfer doesn't make up for the potential for these kinds of things happening.

I'm saddened that you lost stuff, glad that it won't be too hard to reshoot, and glad that you lost stuff so that you would learn the fragility of your hard work. We rely on these magical boxes and entrust all our efforts to them... the truth is, they are machines and are incapable of caring what happens to our footage. If they hiccup, we're screwed. The general rule of thumb for me is, Always backup your data as frequently as you are comfortable redoing the work you'd lose between backups.

With footage, I keep 3 copies at all times... tape, the project on disk, the project on an external disk. I never overwrite in case catastrophy strikes.

Kids: Stay paranoid, stay safe!
 
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