topic Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems in Camcorders

VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

davidthal — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:11:17 GMT

While taking video with my G30 using MP4 at the 35Mbps rate in Sports mode, I have encountered two problems.

First, it will sometimes stop recording and say that the memory card is not fast enough. I'm using a 64GB PNY Elite Performance SDXC UHS-1 Class 10 90MB/sec card that is plenty fast and should work fine.

Second, I've had the camera freeze up while recording. When this happens, the red "operation" indicator on the screen starts to flash and I am unable to stop recording. Sometimes, after I stop recording, it will not start again. In one case, I had to turn the camera off to get it back to normal. In another case, even turning the camera switch off did nothing, as the camera stayed on but would not respond. I had to remove the battery to get it to turn off.

Canon's response was as follows:

"I believe the memory card may be the cause of this issue. The PNY Elite Performance memory card, while fast enough, also incorporates the UHS-1 standard, which is not supported by this camcorder. I recommend trying a second memory card without the UHS-1 designation."

However, I checked the Canon list of tested memory cards, and many of them use the UHS-1 standard, so that does not sound like a valid issue.

Has anyone else had similar issues?

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

TheDiveO — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 09:19:55 GMT

While I just got my own G30 just a few days ago I may help nevertheless as I had the unfortunate luck to gain some experience with my GoPro HD Hero 3s and memory card performance.

To the best of my knowledge, the class 10 or U1 classifications are more or less worthless in practice. This unfortunately also applies to most card vendor speed claims, such as the 90MB/s you are mentioning. For instance, I've speed tested SanDisk Ultra microSD cards which are class 10 cards. I encountered infrequent recording aborts with my GoPro HD Hero 3s. In these speed tests I found out that these cards only perform at roughly 5 to 5.5 MByte/s writing 32kb blocks. The important part here is: 32kb block size (for a FAT32 32GB card) and writing. The same card considerably performs faster when either using 1MB blocks or when reading. I basically had to buy more expensive cards as the cheaper ones does not perform as required.

So, from my experience, forget about any class 10 and read performance figures claimed by card vendors. You basically need to check the type of cards you plan to use with a performance program, such as a harddisk test tool.

I'm using some SanDisk Ultra SD 32GB cards that I had lying around with my G30 at 35Mbit/s which perform well. I've also tested my SanDisk microSD Extreme 32GB with success. For the latter I know from memory that they perform at 6.7Mbyte/s writing speed for 32kb blocks.

My impression is that from your description your memory cards do not perform as required in their writing speed. The 90mbs figure you give most surely refers to large block size reading. But cameras use small block writing. And they cannot buffer for long, so the card needs to have sustained writing performance. With all the overhead included, you need cards that roughly perform at 5MByte/s writing, 32k block size.

It's unfortunate, I know from my own experience, but you may need to buy faster and more expensive memory cards.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

davidthal — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 12:29:05 GMT

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately, there is no way to know whether a memory card is fast enough based on its speed rating or class rating. My 90MB/s may perform worse than a 45MB/s card because one manufacturer makes them differently, so I guess I have to go by trial and error, which is probably what Canon does.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

TheDiveO — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 13:27:30 GMT

Exactly. From my own experience, the situation still is better for SD cards and much worse for microSD cards. While the microSD SanDisk Ultras 32GB didn't perform as required in my GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition cams, my G30 is happy to feed them with my footage. Even my old SD SanDisk Extremes 32GB work flawlessly in the G30.

I had to learn the hard way in these past years that regular-priced SD cards and microSD cards aren't sufficient anymore for 35mbits FullHD and 2.7k 45mbits protune shooting. If you want to be free of trouble then I'm afraid you need to pay the premium for faster cards. For instance, the SanDisk Extreme 32GB work fine.

Besides the speed ratings, there is something else of high importance at this time: how the writing scheme is setup in the memory card controller. For instance, there are two variants of the SanDisk Ultra 32GB microSD on the market. One that is more robust but slower, this is optimized for smartphones. The other variant is optimized for video and features a different memory controller strategy: better sustained writing speed at less wear leveling.

In general, cheaper cards are optimized towards general usage, where short drops in writing performance aren't noticeable. The more expensive cards are optimized towards video or burst writing.

Atthis time my rule of thumb is approximately as this: video-capable memory cards cost roughly twice as much as ordinary smartphone memory cards. the upside is that bringing in my raw footage into my post production system is so much faster (using an USB 3 reader and fast cards).

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

davidthal — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 13:37:25 GMT

Update. I bought and used the Sandisk Extreme 32GB cards (45 MB/s) that are recommended by Canon. Unfortunately, I still received some memory save errors due to inadequate speed, although they have been much less frequent. So, the memory card is probably the likely cause for this issue.

However, I also still had the camera freeze up on me again, which required me to remove the battery. So, I returned the camera and ordered a replacement because I didn't want to find out later that I just happened to get a clunker. The new camera also gave me a couple of memory save errors with the Sandisk memory cards. Eventually, this camera also froze up on me, so apparently this issue may be a more widespread problem with the camera software, not a specific problem with the hardware.

I'm pretty sure that every time it froze up I was using the 3 second pre-record feature. I really like the feature since it ensures that I will not miss any action even if I start the camera later than I should. However, if this is causing the problem, I will have to live without it. I have since used the camera for about six hours worth of video recording with no further problems.

I would recommend that Canon do some more testing, because I suspect that something in the pre-record function is causing intermittent problems. I will provide any updates if it happens again, but I am reluctant to try the pre-record feature again.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

TheDiveO — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 16:46:10 GMT

Sad to hear! Did you run a performance check on your SD Extremes to make sure that they perform correctly? I'm using the slower Ultras at the moment and never had any issues so far (filmed roughly two hours worth of raw footage at 35MBits with my G30).

There are several free HDD performance programs for Windooze that do the task, such as HD_Speed. You should see no drops below 5Mbyte/s in any way when writing 32kByte blocks. HD_Speed allows you to control the test.

This is an example for a SanDisk microSD 32GB card. Please ignore the bump. This particular card performs at more than 7MByte/s.

From my GoPro experience I've learnt that frequent hangs may not caused by firmware problems but by slow or faulty memory cards. There seem to be many fake SanDisk cards on the market so I always ensure that I buy from a renowned retail shop. No bargains, no cheap Amazon crap, no refurbished cards ... thus so far no problems. In consequence I never had any problems with my memory cards so far.

My GoPro woes also showed me that whatever memory card testing a company does, it will be void by the time you hit the send button. For instance, SanDisk sold the Extreme microSD, now it sells the ExtremePlus microSD. My performance measure shows that the ExtremePlus performs slower than the Extreme. But maybe this is because the cards' memory controllers now work mor reliably? Who knows?

Basically everything better than HD ready at three MBytes per second may cause problems with current SD cards and even more so microSD cards.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

k800ben — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 19:49:27 GMT

I have exactly the same problem! Exactly.. the pre-record is the problem but that is the main reason i bought the camera.

I tried a SanDisk 80 Mbits per sec card and the Memory write speed warning went away BUT still had the camera freeze on me.

Have you managed to find a fix?

Cheers
Ben

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

davidthal — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 12:21:51 GMT

I don't see any way to fix it other than to have Canon update their firmware. But they first have to investigate and find out what is causing the problem. Since I have stopped using the pre-record function, I have not had any instance of the camera freezing up. Maybe I'll try it again someday, but it isn't worth losing video because of it.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

k800ben — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 19:01:43 GMT

What did Canon say? because i'm telling them at the moment they have a problem and they refuse to accept it.
Have you found anyone else with the same problem?

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

davidthal — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 19:12:36 GMT

As I noted in my first post, Canon's response was as follows:

I have not contacted them since then.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

k800ben — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 19:22:43 GMT

I've only ever bought Sandisk card.. aren't they all UHS-1? Whats the ulternative? sorry if this is a simple question but i haven't a clue.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

TheDiveO — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 19:53:57 GMT

As a G30 owner (PAL version) I was asked whether I am experiencing any issues with prerecording. I have to admit that I didn't tested prerecording yet, so I ran a few tests. I tested both H.264 MP4 prerecording for 25MBits 1080p25 as well as 35MBits 1080p50.

I tested with a SanDisk SD card Ultra 32GB (more than two years old) and SanDisk microSD(!) Extreme Plus 32GB via SD card adapter (and a recent purchase maybe three months ago). Both are class 10 cards ... which doesn't mean anything in reality. The Extreme Plus is marked additionally as U1.

Both cards performed in my prerecording tests without any problems. No firmware issues seen, fw version is 1.0.3.0. No hangs, no record aborts, works as (I hate to say) advertised.

And this even without any issues as the SanDisk Ultra SD card actually is a really terrible memory card, performing extremely bad. Its write performance for 32kB write blocks oscillates a lot between 3 and 8 MByte/s, mean is around 5.5 MByte/s. The G30 obviously has a really good memory card interface from what I see. A GoPro would have choked and died immediately, while my G30 safely tucks away, solidly writing video stream data. Seems that the G30 has some buffer spent well on the memory card interface.

The 32GB Extreme Plus microSD has better performance in that it offers constant writing speed. I suspect that its SD cousin should perform as well ... but one cannot be sure what the manufacturers really through into their plastic cards unless you test each one individually. I've seen varying SanDisk card performance, but on a card type and card size variety, same type usually has constant performance across multiple cards.

I always format any of my video memory card prior to immediate use in the camera it is going to be used. A quick format is sufficient. I never delete any take or photo I shot. Never, ever. Have learnt this the hard way from my GoPro Heros. I always only add shots, never change anything besides adding new takes and photos. No in-camera scene editing. Never ever.

So far, I didn't encounter any issues with my PAL HF G30. Maybe 60fps may trip card limits, but I can't test this as Canon unfortunately decided to do PAL and NTSC separate firmwares instead of offering us customers a unified firmware with 24fps, 25fps, 30fps, 50fps, and 60fps. Would love to do some takes in 60fps and slow them down to 25fps...

In the past year I have seen so many issues related to memory cards ... unbelievable. I now understand that being a camera manufacturer is a tough job, at least for todays video performance expectations. Card manufacturers, it seems according to the many issues seen, don't care about real world performance and just print fantasy figures onto their cards. No card I've tested so far even reaches twenty percent writing performance of what is advertised. I'm talking about real world write block sizes, and not fantasy block size that Marketing has wet dreams about.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

hypnostage — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 15:59:08 GMT

Maybe you can advise me what to do. I recently bought my g30 and with it a Micro 128 SD memory card. It worked beautifully the first 2-3 times I used it. I erased the card and used the camera at a recent festival. The display shows my videos, but the camera will not play all of them back. Out of 8, or so it will only play back 3.

My compute shows the videos when I put the Sd card in it, but it will not play them except as black video.

Any help, ideas?

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

Mykolas — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 13:36:20 GMT

Hello hypnostage!

Thanks for posting.

The VIXIA HF G30 was designed to be used with full sized SD cards. If you are using a Micro SD card with an adapter, the camera may not be reading or writing to and from the card properly.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

hypnostage — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 14:41:51 GMT

Thank you.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

hypnostage — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 14:45:24 GMT

Other than the SD card issue I am very pleased with the g30. I did not buy it for the wi-fi features, but recently while reading the manual found I could control zoom and more while on stage with my smartphone or tablet. I can also see on my screen what the camera sees.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

hypnostage — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:44:29 GMT

The micro card shows a 3 gig file and you can see the first scene as an icon. Is there any way I can access the file? any software you know of that would do it?

Thanks.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

Richard — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:40:23 GMT

Hi hypnostage,

If you're shooting in MP4, we recommend the use of ImageBrowser EX/Canon CameraWindow to transfer your movies.

If your movies were shot in AVCHD, the Pixela Data Import Utility, included with your camcorder is a good choice.

Your computer's operating system may offer other alternatives. Mac users may import AVCHD movies using iMovie, already on their computers.

Windows 7 and Windows 8 users may use the Windows Live Movie Maker software, available from Microsoft's download.live.com.

There are third-party choices available, too. It's a good idea to seek out user and professional reviews for the software you're considering.

If you're considering commercially available software, I recommend "trying before you buy", if the option is available. This will help you determine if the software is a good fit for your needs and workflow.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

hypnostage — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 20:37:00 GMT

Thanks, I appreciate the info and quick response. but, what I meant was do you, or anyone on this forum, have any suggestions how I might retrieve all of the movie files? They are there (3 gig) and you can see a scene as an icon. I can bring them into my computer, but so far regardless of the program I have tried (Roxio Creator or Power Director are two) I cannot open them. There are several files I can open and view just fine.

Any help appreciated.

Re: VIXIA HF G30 Power and Memory Card Problems

hypnostage — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 03:19:03 GMT

Will a full size SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-1 64gb card work okay?

Still womdering how I might access the files that are on the other one but will not play.

Any ideas appreciated.