ir_fuel

Tried a 3rd SD card which got formatted in the cam (BTW I don't seem to find an explicit "format" option in the camera menus, is this normal? I just asked me to init the card) and all worked fine this weekend.

One weird thing: I can read the SD card without problems on my Windows machine, but for my mac it is unreadable.

ProCoach

Yes, normal. The SD Card Check the camera goes through orders the card, but is not a format, per se.

That is weird. Both FAT32 and exFAT should be readable by both Windoze and Apple OS X...

Spyerx

Had this problem. The exfat is not Mac readable.
So format card in Mac as fat32
Insert in camera.
Life is good and Mac pc and camera will read and use fine.

ProCoach

I stand corrected. The OEM cards come from the manufacturer in FAT32.

One of the things that is really important to do if you are cross-platform (using both windows and mac to read the SC HD video) is that in windows, if you delete the old video files on the card, they're gone. In a Mac, you can delete them (move them to Trash), but if you don't ALSO empty the Trash, the space the movies took up is left reserved on the card and it won't record...

johnsopa

I know that I'm resurrecting a dead thread, but I had the same problem today. Four sessions, each about 20 mins long. Each session generated a 200 MB - 900 MB MOV file that was unreadable, along with an FOF file of the same name, followed by another MOV file that read fine. Basically, the first half or so of each session couldn't be read but the second half could.

I found this thread and di some additional searching and it looks like AiM has known about this problem since November of 2010.

There is a Windows utility that they offer for download that will repair the broken MOV file.

It's available here:

http://www.aimsports.com/software/index.html

I thought I would post this in case anyone else runs into the problem.

The broken MOV is repaired but it looks like each repaired file loses some data -- maybe about 10-20% of each file is skipped. But it's better than having no movie file.

ProCoach

John, PLEASE get a new card that is fast and uncorrupted. The .FOF file errors are caused by the camera's inability to get the card to write the information as quickly as it wants it written. It's the card's fault.

I only use Transcend 600X Class 10 UHS-1 retail cards up to 32 GB.

I had this issue when the first HD cam came out and I bought some Patriot cards (seemingly a good brand name) on special. Every one generated errors. Replaced them and no more issues.

linzman

I had an issue once when I took the card out immediately after coming into the pits. The file was corrupt and would not open on my MAC until i used VLC, where it opened without issue.

Matt Romanowski

Like Peter said, a new card should fix your problem John. I like and have had great luck with top of the line Sandisk cards. I like the 64 GB cards so they hold way more than you need in case you forget to clear them.

ProCoach

Just make sure the cards larger than 32 GB are formatted to FAT32, instead of exFAT. There are simple and free utilities to do that.

When a few clients of mine used 64 GB Sandisk cards in the SC HD's in their ClubSports, they didn't record at all.

When I reformatted them, they worked perfectly. Sandisk has a new Ultra spec that is 90 MBps. Saw them for reasonable prices at Costco this evening.

johnsopa

The card I'm using is a SanDisk Ultra XC1 64 GB formatted as FAT32 -- only a couple weeks old. They don't get much better/faster than these.

I went back and looked at a couple of other cards from the last couple months and each of them have at least one FOF file on them.

I'll try reformatting another brand new card for the next time I go out.

What's funny is that I don't see any FOF files related to street driving -- they are only with track time.

Hmm...

ProCoach

IF each of them have an .FOF file on them, then the card is being pulled while still recording or you send the camera in for checkover and repair. That's NOT normal.

The only other possibility is that EMI or some other electrical "noise" is corrupting the camera. This can be a noisy voltage feed or unsupressed spark plug wires or spark plugs. But since I've sold dozens of these systems to 981 GT4 owners without this issue, I doubt the latter is your problem.

Just because a card is new, doesn't mean the card is not screwed up...

ir_fuel

While we are resurrecting...

This is not entirely correct. When going through the smartycam log files you can see they actually go through the process of cleaning up those hidden directories containing the deleted files prior to recording.