Canon c70 missing files after recording

[timthornburg]

Hello,
I was shooting and elopement in CO and around mid day I switched my camera settings on my canon c70 to be a higher frame rate to get some slow motion shots.

I think I changed "System frequency" from 24 to 59 - my Resolution to a lower resolution-  and then the frame rate and some recording format.
I stopped checking footage and from that point on I can't see any footage I recorded. With the card in the camera - if If I try and view media it says "no clips." I only have 1 card in the camera so I know I'm on the correct card slow.

I opened the card in Canon XF utility and I can see it there but i don't see any thumbnails or information. 

I used Ease Use USA to recover the files that I see by a timestamp. Some of them or .dat files. I recovered them but they don't open or play in VLC.

Any help would be great. I have no idea how this happened but I want out of this camera system if this is an issue,
EOS C70 

[AtticusLake]

So there are a bunch of issues in your post.  I'll try to deal with them.

First, the camera won't play back or display clips recorded at a different system frequency.  This is explained in the manual, version 1.1.0.1, page 134.  So it's no surprise that when you change frequency, your previous clips no longer show in the camera.  They should still be on the SD card, though.

Second, you should be able to get all of your clips off the SD card onto your computer.  However, I have never used XF utility, or any other Canon software.  I just put the card into an SD card reader connected to the computer, and copy the files off using Windows file manager.

I don't know what your ".dat" files are - I've never seen those.  Your files should be ".mp4", or ".crm", or ".mxf", in various folders.  (I'm going from memory, as I no longer have a C70.)

As for playing the files, most of what your camera records will not play, or will not play well, in VLC.  You need to use an NLE, like Premiere Pro, or Resolve, etc.  When you export a finished movie, you will export in a playback-friendly format and bit rate.  But that's not what the camera records.

Hope this helps.

[timthornburg]

Hi Atticus,
Thank you for taking the time to read through the post and give some help.

I appreciate the information about 11.0.1 - good to know- 

The files aren't showing when plugging the SD card into a computer. That's what I was originally making the post about. I can see all the files I recorded that day up to 2:30 when I switched frequency.

i can see some of the files that are there when opening the XF utility- but when just opening the card on my computer its like the clips aren't even there or never recorded them. I started to think to myself? "Did I just never record anything?" but I looked through my meta glasses behind the scenes content and I can see that red light on when I was capturing.

I do have VLC player - this doesn't seem to be able to play any sort of recovered file- it's playing a 7 second black screen for some of the clips that I was able to try and recover with the timestamp around when I was recording but not seeing any files on the card.

[AtticusLake · Accepted solution]

OK, after some experimenting (I'm using a C80 - I don't have the C70 any more, but the C80 is very similar):

It looks like the camera doesn't want to record XF-AVC files recorded at different system frequencies on the same memory card. This seems to be just for XF-AVC (MXF) files - not RAW or MP4. I don't know exactly what happens on the C70, but on the C80 I get an error message when I switch to XF-AVC on a memory card that already has an XF-AVC file on it, but at a different system frequency. It then refuses to record.

I can't find any mention of this in the manual, though page 140 (of the C80 manual) talks about a similar issue for playback.

So, I guess I would say that if you switch system frequencies, to be safe, you should switch to a different memory card, and format that card in the camera.

As for VLC, yes, as I said, most of what your camera records will not play, or will not play well, in VLC. In fact in 4 years I have never been able to get a clip from the camera to play well in VLC, and that's on a new, high-end computer. The clips the camera records just aren't optimised for instant playback; they're for editing high-quality projects.

[timthornburg]

Very helpful! thank you for experimenting and helping me out here. I am going to try and recover any files if possible through the card but as a standard I'll never switch frequency's again mid shoot.