Maximum sd card size for XA70

[marionette_66]

Hello,

This piece of information has eluded me for a long time. I have looked in specification sheets, user manual and other countries of the canon website and I cannot find the answer...

Does anybody knows what is the Maximum sd card size for XA70 camcorder?

Thank you, Roberto
 

[kvbarkley · Accepted solution]

It is a two step process. First find the largest card that the camera can use:

The manual indicates SDXC. Now go to wikipedia and look up SD cards to see how large an SDXC can be:

So 2 TeraBytes, which has to be formatted EXFAT.

[normadel]

Do you know anyone with a 2TB SDXC that you can try to see if it really does work, before you buy one?

Cameras don't always get along with the maximum published card size.

[marionette_66]

Thank you kvbarkley,

So you are inferring that since A) the camera supports the format SDXC and B) the SDXC standard as of 2009 has a maximum of 2TB; therefore, C) the camera supports 2TB.

But the manual makes no mention of the version of SDXC that is supports; granted, the XA70 camera was released on November 2022, and it will be very weird if it did not comply with 10+ year old standard... but still.

It is like saying "this external HD supports data transfers via USB-C". "How fast is the data transfer?" you asked, well, find out when this device came to the market, check the standards for the USB-C protocol at that time, and hope for the best...

I am disappointed that cannon decided not to put this information on the documentation, after all, the limitation on the size of card that the camera can operate with, is inherited within its hardware\firmware of the device itself. Was it really a mysterious piece of information that was not available at the time of printing the documentation for this camera?

Nevertheless, nice detective work!

Regards, Roberto

[rs-eos]

The manual does have the specs as kvbarkley pointed out.  Note that the compatible cards are specifically SDXC UHS-I (and not UHS-II).  Thus, these max out with write speeds of V30 (30 MB/s).

In terms of what size card you realistically need though, are you planning on doing extremely long recordings in one go?

A 2 TB card is roughly 2,000,000 MB (I'm using 1,000 instead of 1,024 in my math here).  And if recording UHD footage, that is at a data rate of 160 Mb/s or 20 MB/s.  Thus, such a card could record 100,000 seconds or just under 28 hours worth.

[rs-eos]

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@marionette_66 wrote:

It is like saying "this external HD supports data transfers via USB-C". "How fast is the data transfer?" you asked, well, find out when this device came to the market, check the standards for the USB-C protocol at that time, and hope for the best...

---

This actually gets more complicated.  USB-C has a max theoretical bandwidth of 40 Gbps (5 GBps).  However, depending upon how many devices are sharing that USB bus, if the controller is shared or independent, and the max write speed of the drive, the actual data rate of copies can be much lower.

e.g. before I purchased my M2 Ultra Mac Studio, I needed to know if the three rear Thunderbolt 3/4 ports were using independent controllers, or a shared controller.  It ended up being independent and thus I was able to attach an SSD drive to each of the three ports.  Had it been shared, all three SSDs would be sharing that 5 GBps bandwidth which would be problematic since each drive is capable of 3 GBps each.  If all were doing reads/writes, that's too much bandwidth.  But being independent, no issues.

[marionette_66]

Ricky,

You talked about the controller for the Thunderbolt ports in the back of the computer that you wanted to buy, and you mentioned that "It ended up being independent".

How did you find that out? Was it in the manual\documentation of the computer?, Did you contact tech support?, Did you tracked down someone with that same computer and ask them?

Regards, Roberto 

[rs-eos]

I read the specs of the M2 Ultra chip which merges two M2 Extreme chips together.  Each Extreme has two independent Thunderbolt 3/4 controllers.  So the combined 4 controllers provide enough bandwidth for the three rear ports and front port of the Mac Studio.

[marionette_66]

Ricky,

So you did not have to go to other websites or cross reference standards vs specifications?

How cool it is when you can get your questions answered by just reading the documentation provided by the company about a product that the same company developed? 

How come Apple can do this but Cannon cannot?  </sarcasm> 

This is not directed to you Ricky, but I hope you can see that printing 5 more words in the technical specification of this camera (Maximum capacity: 2TB per card) could have save all of us some time an effort.

Roberto 

[rs-eos]

Capacities are ever increasing, so why be bothered with adjusting such references?

But in your case, the question remains as to if you really need certain capacities of cards with your camcorder.  Are you really going to capture footage continuous for around 28 hours (approx max of 2 TB)?