URSA Mini 4.6k Issues

We have been using the EF mount URSA mini 4.6 for the past 6 months (past 2 months with 4.0 software), use Lexar Pro 3400x (256GB) CFAST 2.0 cards, and have ran into a few problems:

1) Occasionally I have booted the camera up and the the lens aperture would not show thus not making it adjustable. I have to reboot the camera in order to fix this issue, but don't think this should ever happen. Its never happened when its been mounted to any other camera I've used.

2) We have shot footage on the camera and had issues with playing back the footage in camera. It still would show up on card, could still be transferred and edited, but just not showing in camera.

3) One time where we filmed some footage and I had 2 clips (of about 9) that had media (file size showed there was something there), but wouldn't copy. It copied everything else but those 2 clips. Hasn't happened since.

Lastly,
4) We had one experience where we filmed a whole shoot with multiple takes on the URSA mini and loaded the card and it showed NOTHING on the card. Luckily it was a backup camera, but scary to see that nothing was recorded to it after seeing that the camera was recording during the shoot. Hasn't happened again, but scary to see when it could have been something more important.

How much of this is card based problems and how could you check the card to make sure and how much of this is the camera fault?

Thanks!

David

David, I can say at least this:

ad 1)
It is difficult to say what's the exact reason behind this.
For some lenses (I think latest Sigmas) you should update lens firmware to the latest version. There was a bug with older lens firmware and Ursa firmware 4, afaik.
I found on an older Canon lens that when autofocus and OIS had been enabled on the lens, sometimes the camera lost the ability to change the aperture. This is just my experience and might not apply to your case.

ad 2)
In-camera playback does only playback footage recorded of the same type. For example, if you first do some RAW recordings, then switch to ProRes and do additional recordings, then start playback. Now the camera shows only the ProRes recordings. Switch the camera back to RAW and you will see only RAW recordings.

ad 3)
I always power down the camera before removing the CFAST2.0 cards. And in the card reader I use the eject command of Windows to unmount the cards. This is just to make sure the file system gets not damaged in any way. I know CFAST standard is meant to be hot-plugable. But I am just super careful. So far I have not encountered any problems during file transfers.
You might also check your card reader. For example the Lexar CR1 had some bugs. Or it might be the USB3 cable.

[quote="Robert Niessner"]


ad 2)
In-camera playback does only playback footage recorded of the same type. For example, if you first do some RAW recordings, then switch to ProRes and do additional recordings, then start playback. Now the camera shows only the ProRes recordings. Switch the camera back to RAW and you will see only RAW recordings.

Thank you Robert this just answered a question I was about to post.
Cheers.
D.

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