80D/Mac OS 10.4 weirdness: Is 32GB the upper limit for card compatibility?

[Brainstormers]

Greetings, All...first-time poster.

We just acquired a new EOS 80D with intentions of using it mostly as a video camera.  We do educational theatre programs in elementary schools, and needed something portable (and cheaper than true-blue pro video cams) to shoot our shows for marketing and training purposes.

As a video cam, once one develops the skill to gently turn the lens barrel to simulate electronic zoom, I'm pretty pleased with the results so far.  The real-time tracking focus in AF is impressive and very useful to make watchable footage of our constantly-moving subjects.  I'm annoyed by the 29:59 linear shoot limit (as our shows tend to run 50-ish minutes, it means even if we're right on the stick we always lose about two seconds of sync) but we can live with that using cutaways from some static GoPro setups.

What's really giving me fits, though, is an apparent incompatibility between camera and our editing workstation (a Mac G5 running 10.4.11) for a data card any bigger than 32GB.  32's—no problem migrating the data; 64's, no go, the computer can't recognize the format and asks if I want to initialize the card.  I CAN, however, migrate the data off the card onto a newer MacBook running 10.11.6, then dump it onto an external drive, then migrate that onto the video computer.  Great big PITA to do every day, obviously.  If I allow the computer to format the 64 as Mac Journaled, then the camera can't read it (according to the Mac, the card as formatted by the camera is MS-DOS).

Aside from the redundant migration solution, my only other workaround is to go MP4 and only use 32 gig cards.  I do have a preference for MOV files as less compressed, but we start to run into capacity problems getting a 50-minute (well, a 30-minute and a 20 minute) MOV clip on a 32.  Sure would be nice to have the working room of a 64.

I realize that this is perhaps more a Mac question than a Canon one (as in some quibble between 10.4 and 10.11 OS's), but I wonder if anybody else has faced this dilemma, and if so whether you've found a way to make a 64 card work.

Or....hey, Canon, any chance you could someday offer Mac formatting in the camera itself...??  You'd make life a lot easier for shoestring hacks like me! 🙂

Thanks in advance for any words o' wisdom,

Geoff

Brainstormers! LLC

Royal Oak, MI

[kvbarkley]

Probably a difference in FAT and EXFat. Look to see if you  can find an Exfat file system for your admittedly ancient Mac. (My google foo says there is no such thing.)

[Brainstormers]

Thanks, that's a technical point on Macs I wasn't previously aware of.  I'll see if our computer guru has any insights.

[RobertTheFat]

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@Brainstormers wrote:

Greetings, All...first-time poster.

We just acquired a new EOS 80D with intentions of using it mostly as a video camera.  We do educational theatre programs in elementary schools, and needed something portable (and cheaper than true-blue pro video cams) to shoot our shows for marketing and training purposes.

As a video cam, once one develops the skill to gently turn the lens barrel to simulate electronic zoom, I'm pretty pleased with the results so far.  The real-time tracking focus in AF is impressive and very useful to make watchable footage of our constantly-moving subjects.  I'm annoyed by the 29:59 linear shoot limit (as our shows tend to run 50-ish minutes, it means even if we're right on the stick we always lose about two seconds of sync) but we can live with that using cutaways from some static GoPro setups.

What's really giving me fits, though, is an apparent incompatibility between camera and our editing workstation (a Mac G5 running 10.4.11) for a data card any bigger than 32GB.  32's—no problem migrating the data; 64's, no go, the computer can't recognize the format and asks if I want to initialize the card.  I CAN, however, migrate the data off the card onto a newer MacBook running 10.11.6, then dump it onto an external drive, then migrate that onto the video computer.  Great big PITA to do every day, obviously.  If I allow the computer to format the 64 as Mac Journaled, then the camera can't read it (according to the Mac, the card as formatted by the camera is MS-DOS).

Aside from the redundant migration solution, my only other workaround is to go MP4 and only use 32 gig cards.  I do have a preference for MOV files as less compressed, but we start to run into capacity problems getting a 50-minute (well, a 30-minute and a 20 minute) MOV clip on a 32.  Sure would be nice to have the working room of a 64.

I realize that this is perhaps more a Mac question than a Canon one (as in some quibble between 10.4 and 10.11 OS's), but I wonder if anybody else has faced this dilemma, and if so whether you've found a way to make a 64 card work.

Or....hey, Canon, any chance you could someday offer Mac formatting in the camera itself...??  You'd make life a lot easier for shoestring hacks like me! 🙂

Thanks in advance for any words o' wisdom,

Geoff

Brainstormers! LLC

Royal Oak, MI

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You're letting the tail wag the dog. Upgrade your Mac OS or get a Windows computer.

[Brainstormers]

Point taken.  Unfortunately, the Dog in question has been innoculated with scandalously expensive (and limited-key) editing software, such that a new Mac plus new Final Cut exceeds our budget in the medium-term.  So, barring a yet-unknown fix, we'll have to limp along using 32GB cards for the time being.

[TCampbell]

A few things...

The card format is a universal standard.  The issue isn't so much that macs don't support the format (they do), the issue is that your mac (a PowerPC G5 mac) is VERY old.  The Powermac G5 came out in 2003 and it's run was over by 2006.

Canon isn't going to support cards formated with any native mac filesystem type such as HFS+ or APFS not because they are stubborn or don't love Mac users... but because there is simply no need to do that.  Universal standards do exist such that a file written to that card can be read by any computer.  

By "any" computer, I do mean any reasonably current computer.  At some point you have to cut-off technology that we no longer use.   They don't support writing files to floppy diskettes or magnetic tape... nobody uses those formats.  When the hardware & OS vendors no longer support the standard, then there's not much point in manufacturers of other products supporting those platforms either.  I have a friend who REALLY likes Windows XP... a lot!  He's upset that nobody supports Windows XP anymore.  But I keep pointing out to him that even Microsoft doesn't support Windows XP anymore... so it's hard to expect anyone else to support it.  He begrudingly bought a new computer (and complains that it does not work just like Windows XP).  

I get it... we like what we grew up with and what we are used to using.  But tech companies have to introduce new technology to remain relevant and competitive.  And when they do that, they can't really afford to support old technology anymore... it costs too much to keep developers and engineers on those now-ancient systems and share-holders expect maximum profits.  Thus...  market pressures demand that these companies introduce new technology and abandon old technology ... whether or not we consumers are happy about it.  If they ignore the market pressures and share-holders... they go out of business (and then we consumers are really unhappy.)

You are using a mac which is 9 major OS release versions behind.  Apple hasn't produced a single computer that uses the PowerPC architecture in 11 years.  The last operating system that could run on such a computer was produced 10 years ago.

My advice:  You more than got your monies-worth out of that computer.  It's time to buy a new computer.

The most basic new computer you could possibly buy today will seem like an amazing upgrade with respect to performance, capacity, etc. over what you're using now.

As for the memory cards in the camera... they use a neutral format that any modern OS can read.  Back in the day when no cards were larger than 32GB, that was the FAT32 format (and your Mac would read such a card.  If you were to go buy a memory card with a 32GB or smaller capacity, your Mac will probably be able to read the files on that card with no problem.)

When larger cards came out, the limits of the FAT32 filesystem were reached (it literally cannot support filesystems larger than 32GB) so a new filesystem format was created and this is the "exFAT" format.   exFAT was introduced in 2006 (the reason your Powermac G5 doesn't support it is literally because the standard did not exist at that time.)

The first Mac OS X to support exFAT was version 10.6.5 (you are on 10.4... but the final release of Mac OS X that can support a PowerPC machine is 10.5 ... so you can't run 10.6.  10.6 requires an Intel mac.

There is something called the "FUSE" project (an open source project to write filesystem drivers for all kinds of things... primarily used on Linux machines but there is a Mac port called MacFUSE) and the project does indeed have an exFAT driver. So "in theory" it could be made to work on your Mac ... but it's complicated and not for the faint of heart.  First, MacFUSE's oldest Mac version is for OS X 10.5 or newer (and you are on 10.4).  So you can't run Mac FUSE unless you upgrade to 10.5 (which you can do because 10.5 supports PowerPC).  But then you'd need the exFAT driver and I don't see a pre-built FUSE filesystem for Mac OS X 10.5 ... which means you may have to download the source code and compile the binary yourself (definitely not for the faint of heart).  If you have no experience with software development and how to build your own binaries... this is definitely not for you.  This is the part where I hand you the map of the world and point out the spot where it says "Beyond this point, thar be dragons and sea monsters!" and you would do well to heed that warning.

Next lets talk about the 29:59 limit.

That's not really Canon's idea.  You can blame interntional treaties and tariffs for that one.  Every camera maker has the same limit.

The USA traditionally doesn't add tariff's to cameras regardless of type.  But that's not true for many countries of the world.  Many countries DO charge import tariffs and what they charge depends on what the product is.  So it turns out that there's a tariff for importing a "video" camera that many countries charge which is higher than the tariff on a "photographic" camera.   But in today's digital world, there's generally no such thing as a digital photographic camera that can't shoot video.  So the internaitonal treaties agreed that if a camera can record a video for 30 minutes or longer then that camera MUST be treated as a "video" camera and tariffed as such.  If it's less than 30 minutes then they can classify it as a "photographic" camera and pay the lower tariff.

So to avoid this expensive tariff, the camera companies put a limit on the video so that the camera isn't allowed to record a video for more than 29 minutes and 59 seconds -- and this avoids the tariff.

Again, the USA doesn't charge a tariff even on a video camera BUT these cameras are designed with the same firmware to be used in countries around the world so they have to design the camera to make all of these world governments happy.  And hence you have a 29m59s limit.

Lastly I thought I'd mention something about focus.  The "STM" lenses are designed to be extremely quiet when using auto-focus.  Specifically they are designed to be so extremely quiet that if recording video via the internal camera mic (although audio quality would be much better using an external "powered" microphone such as Rode VideoMic Pro) that the microphone will not be able to detect the sound of the focus motors moving (for some lenes you can hear the focus motor but you really have to struggle to hear it... it's extremely quiet.   For other lenses you can't hear it at all.)

The auto-focus response is normally whatever the speed is for that lens.  

But the 80D has the ability to use "slow focus" so you get gentler focus transitions IF you use one of the lenses that supports this.  

Here is that list of lenses:

https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART164635&cat=1263C&actp=LIST

[Brainstormers]

Thanks, Tim, for your generosity of time, knowledge and patience.

Yup, we're all too aware that we're editing on a dinosaur.  We're saving our pennies for a new machine, but the skinny margins in the Educational Theatre Biz mean a long period of penny-saving.  We are making the 32GB card limit and 29:59 linear time limit work in the meantime.  The former just means shooting on MP4 and watching half a day's progress bar as it transcodes (so on a four-show day we've been looking at two full days of ca-chunking), and the latter just means we time the stop/start such that we're not losing any pivotal verbage, and cover it with one of our GoPro static cutaways.  Doable.

I really appreciate the tutorial on the specific technical snag between the OS's and filesystems (and you guessed right, we're a bunch of theatre guys, so Coding is not any of our resumés), and the reason for the 29:59 limit.  If my tone sounded like I was hating on Canon that wasn't intentional, I figured there was some real-world reason for the limit.

And actually, I'm impressed with the speed, accuracy and the low-noise virtues of the AF.  The only noise we really noticed from the built-in mic on our first shoot was not so much from focusing than from zooming in and out. A Sennheiser shotgun on the camera and a direct-out L/R mix from the board to a Zoom recorder completely fixed that, and we've also learned a kinder and gentler technique for turning the barrel to simulate servo-op pushing and pulling.  So all that's totally workable.

Overall, the 80D is turning out to have been a fine choice as a stopgap machine for our evolving AV, and as we delve deeper into all its capabilities I'm sure I'll be back seeking answers to more EOS For Dummies questions.

Meanwhile, saving our pennies...

Cheers,

Geoff

[Lumigraphics]

Hi Geoff! Hopefully I can contribute some useful ideas. BTW, I'm in the Detroit area too.

First of all, if there is any way to move off the G5 to an Intel machine, do so. The MacBook with 11.6 will run circles around your G5 and have much better software support.

If that specific machine isn't available for editing, maybe pick up a $400 MacBook Pro or Mac mini off Craigslist, an older Intel iMac, etc. You'll be amazed at the difference in performance. You can probably get something for the G5 used or just keep it as a backup.

For a video editor, you can use Premiere Elements which is a one-time purchase, subscribe to the one-app Adobe CC plan for Premiere (I think they have non-profit pricing), find an old copy of Final Cut Express, or use a free solution. http://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-mac-video-editor

If you stick with the G5, at least upgrade to OS X 10.5 which works on all G5 machines. Its a nice upgrade. It won't solve your exFAT problem directly (exFAT support was added in OS X 10.6), but it will let you run FUSE for Mac which has an add-on module to support exFAT. https://osxfuse.github.io/

For general help and a great source for video products, Procam in Livonia is fantastic. They do rentals and have a lot of used gear available too.

Hopefully this all helps, let me know if you have any questions.