2 EOS Camera Failures Inside a church??

[mvarel]

Question: Can something being transmitted inside a room affect EOS cameras? 

Last Saturday while shooting a wedding I had a 5D and an EOS R seemingly record perfectly. 

When I got home only the clips that were shot inside the church were corrupt files. 

BOTH cameras have corrupt video files from the ceremony. ALL the rest of the files from the entire day from both cameras are perfect. Filmed from 1pm to 11pm. 

104 clips from the 5D that day, only 2 ceremony files corrupt.

360 clips from the EOS R that day, only 2 ceremony files corrupt.

- 15 mins of a 21 min clip plays fine, then freezes

- 7 mins of the following 9 min clip plays, then freezes

- 1:14 of a 21 minute clip on the other cam plays then freezes

- 3:39 of the following 8 minute clip plays then freezes

There's no explanation I can think of.

Has anyone ever had this?

Two different camera models, on tripods, not plugged into anything - is it possible something was being transmitted in the church that affected those clips??

I know that sounds crazy, I mean, I've done over 500 weddings and never seen anything like that. Audio/video transmission wouldn't affect a camera, right? They weren't live-streaming but if they were that wouldn't affect my cameras either.

I'm just at a total loss for what happened and need to be sure it doesn't happen at my next wedding.

I had a third 5DmkIV with a wide shot setup and it was recording to a CF card and it was fine. The other two cameras were writing to SD cards: 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro 170 MB/s cards.

The common denominator with the issue is 1. the SD cards, 2. being inside the church. Outside the church every single clip is perfect. We didn't operate the cameras any differently on those two clips than any other time of the day though.

I know I can't recover the files at this point. Putting the card back in the cameras says "cannot playback file" on screen. Plus, the one clip is only 287MB which is nowhere near the size that 21 mins should be. So it showed "recording" on screen, and when I tap it in Finder it shows 21:01, but only plays 1:14.

If anyone has theories or ideas I'd really appreciate it. 

Today I  filmed over 21 mins on the same camera/same card at home and it worked perfectly. So why did a 21 min clip inside the church fail?

[Peter]

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I was filming video on my EOS systems (5DmkIV and EOS R) but there were two photographers there shooting photos on their 5D's. Since photos are quick and write a small file to their cards, they said their photos are all fine. 

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There may be other artifacts to photographs. Check my raw files from a 30D https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BbVchsRYmBxPCx4hgUNGMbcy82IkMyF1/view?usp=sharing

The first one is without RF interference.

[Peter]

Did they fail at the same time also?

[mvarel]

Yes, sort of. The ceremony started at 5pm. 

Both cameras only shot two clips each. We usually record for 20 or so minutes and find a spot to restart the next clip before the 30 min max length is reached for each clip. In this case one camera shot for 21:07 and the other 21:01. We had two operators on them and we both restarted to a new clip after the priest finished talking. 

My clip only plays 1 minute of the 21 minutes it supposedly recorded, but my second shooter was in the back of the church and his clip plays 15 minutes of the 21 it recorded. We both started new clips after that. Mine was around 9 mins and so was his. Mine only plays 3 minutes of it, his plays closer to 7 mins. 

So it's a very weird situation. 

His camera was about 100ft or so away from mine. 

[tiamatzzo]

Your camera issue inside the church does sound puzzling. I actually had a similar experience once. The priest mentioned that cameras weren't allowed inside, which seemed odd. I wonder if there's any connection there. It's possible that certain churches or religious institutions have specific rules or electromagnetic interference that could affect electronic devices.
It's strange that only the clips from the ceremony were affected. Could it be a combination of the SD cards and some unusual electromagnetic interference present in the church? I'm not entirely sure, but it's worth considering.
I've been exploring some interesting information about churches and religion lately, and I came across this website at https://firstchurchlove.com/. It has some unique insights and perspectives. I thought it might be worth checking out if you're curious about the topic.

[Tintype_18]

Never heard of that. Was in the active ministry for 8 years and in a lot of churches, then and now. Besides, such a setup would cost money.

Could it be something from the A/V system, if it was used?