Canon EOS R5 Mark II Playback Bug with Video Repro - Any Canon Moderators Reading This?

[herein2021]

I have now been dealing with this very annoying footage playback bug with my Canon R5II since I have owned it. I have asked on various forums, plenty of people say they have it too, I also sent screenshots to CPS and they said for me to send it in; it is just annoying enough to be a problem but not worth sending it in and losing my camera for weeks especially since it probably wouldn't get fixed since it's a FW problem not a HW problem.

So, at this point I am just curious to see if anyone on this forum has the same problem and hoping there is some slim chance a Canon moderator might see this, repro it, and notify the FW makers that their FW has another bug that so far doesn't seem to be addressed even in the latest 1.1.0 FW.

So, the problem that I have with playing back footage is twofold and I believe anyone can repro this with their R5II as well.

1. When I take a mixture of pictures and videos with the R5II, it does not keep them in chronological order when I hit the playback button. So, for example, if I take 1 picture, then 1 video, then 1 picture, then 1 video, I should be able to hit the playback button and see picture | video | picture | video.

In the R5 and R7 that's exactly what I see when I hit playback. With the R5II when I hit the playback button, I see video | video | picture | picture. The R5II groups all of the videos together and all of the pictures together. This is annoying enough, but as the clip counts get into 50+ and the image counts do the same, it leads into problem 2.

2. At some point after taking a lot of video clips and pictures, the camera stops showing the last picture or video taken. When I hit the playback button it gets stuck only showing the video group or the images group. At this point, I am now standing in front of the client scrolling through tons of video clips trying to show them their last picture taken or sometimes it gets stuck on the images group and I have to try to scroll through all of them then get to the videos then scroll through all of them as well just to try to show the last image or video taken....very frustrating.

The only workaround that I have found so far is to set image search conditions. If I set the image search conditions to just photos, I can then find the last image that was taken, or if I set the images search conditions to just video I can find the last video filmed. But then to switch back and forth I am back to fiddling, usually with sweaty hands, in the middle of a shoot....not ideal at all.

I forgot to mention in the video that even FW version 1.0.3 had the same bug, prior to rolling back to FW 1.0.1 I tested the playback behavior and it was the same.

Here is the repro video:

[March411]

Canon is aware of the challenges and are working on a release of the R5 MkII which rumor has it is supposed to be released this week. Before they pulled the v1.0.1 firmware update it was reported that one of fixes was the issue with movie playback, it was supposed to resolve the bug where movies captured in RAW/SRAW format might not play back correctly due to lens and camera communication issues.

Nobody is really clear why they pulled the update but the revised version is supposed to be expedited. 

[herein2021]

Marc,  

I saw that note in the FW release notes but it has nothing to do with the bug described here, that's why I don't have much confidence that it will be fixed even with FW version 1.1.0. 

I sent the video to CPS, maybe they will eventually realize something is wrong with their playback logic in the R5II. Instead of showing them chronologically, it appears they are sorted by filename. The playback function needs to look at file creation dates, not filenames, that simple tweak would fix it.

[March411]

I wasn't sure since Canon's overview of fixes in firmware updates always appear to be purposely vague. It will be interesting to know if the new release has impact on your problem. If you don't mind throw an update in the thread if you load the new firmware release.

And the Canon moderators are pretty good at reading the vast majority of what is posted here but they are not support. Getting a sample into Canon's CPS hands was a good play.

Did they respond?

[p4pictures]

I know the trouble it causes, and I also understand why it's difernt for the EOS R5 Mark II and also EOS R1. 

EOS R1 & EOS R5 Mark II both support the NewsML G2 standard for movies, this requires the movie files to be stored differently to the still images. There was a requirement from movie makers and press to follow this NewsML G2 standard when these two cameras were developed. Therefore movie filenames now include much more information and the movies are stored in a different folder than the stills. Stills are stored in compliance with the EXIF standard in the familiar DCIM folder and only have 8 character filenames + 3 character extension.

What this means is that when the camera is in playback it either playing back from the movie or the stills folder. It does not access the files in two separate folders by date/time captured. In older cameras where newsML G2 is not used then the movies follow the EXIF standard and it's possible to play them back in sequence as the filenames are all sequential.

Both EOS R1 and EOS R5 Mark II allow a single button to switch between movie playback and stills playback. You can press the MODE button to toggle between movies and stills. It's a message that appears on the LCD when the camera switches on, but rarely afterwards.

Additionally you might want to try another work around which is to use the main dial to jump between movies or stills only, this is like your current search conditions. With an image or movie captured press the play button, then press the Q button. On the right side you should see icons and one is for image jump. By default the image jump is to move 10 images or movies ahead or back when the main dial is turned. The main dial is the one just behind the M-Fn button and shutter button. However you can reconfigure this to jump between movies or stills. It may be another workaround option for you.

[herein2021]

Thank you, that is a great explanation and some workarounds that I will test. I still think they should have found a way to keep the prior playback behavior. Looking at the file creation timestamp would have been the easiest, it wouldn't even need to be written into the metadata, the exFAT file system already has this attribute as a part of the file table and that would fix everything.

The playback does show both stills and videos at the same time so it is enumerating the contents of all of the folders, it also looks in the raw video folder as well, so it enumerates everything, it just needs to sort by file creation date using the file system or combining the EXIF data from the images with the video file metadata to create a chronological view.

The camera is definitely reading something from both file types so it knows the chronological order for each file type, otherwise the pictures and video would not maintain their chronological order when playing back each media type separately. 

I now better understand why the problem exists, and you have provided additional workarounds, but I still think Canon could do something with the FW to make playback behave the way that it does for every previous camera body and for every other camera body from other camera vendors. The playback button should show the chronological order without having to press anything else. Cell phones, websites, other cameras, even my Roku work this way.

With that fix in place, they could then get rid of the movie-still switching message which is annoying as well.

@Marc, I am still waiting for a reply, it will probably take up to 3 days since I emailed them instead of another chat session, the chat session just resulted in them telling me to send the camera body in.

[herein2021 · Accepted solution]

Well Canon CPS replied, they said that there is no way to play back the footage in chronological order, that it is not a bug, but that they would submit my feedback to Canon.

So basically, Canon does not consider it a bug that the R5II and it sounds like the R1 plays back footage differently from literally every other camera on the market?

[March411]

Interesting. Appreciate you coming back with the update!

If you would mark your last post as resolved it will help others if they search the site with the same issue.

[noms78]

I noticed an additional type of playback bug, where the camera consistently play the 2nd last image after pressing playback. It only seems to affect certain batches of R5 mark II bodies from the earliest to the latest. 

[herein2021]

I forgot about that one, I have seen that one as well, but it was a few FW revisions ago for me, I think it's been fixed at least for my copy.  I will keep an eye out and see if it still does it, that one was annoying as well, when it happened there seemed to be no way to view the very last picture taken.