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Dear all,

Yesterday I had my Lexar 128GB 1066x Compact Flash card inside my Canon 5D Mark III and started a firmware update from Canon 1.2.3 to Magic Lantern nightly build 2014Aug07.5D3123. I am doing this very often as I remove ML when I don't need it for faster camera starts. The same camera and the same locked 1GB SD card containing the firmware were used, the CF card was freshly formatted providing an ExFAT partition.

With temperatures around 0°C/32F when doing the firmware update there were no visible activities, the display remained black and the LED was flashing constantly. After more than a minute I assumed that the firmware update got stuck and - because it's additionally and not replacing the original one - interrupted the process by removing the battery.

With the next try and still running Canon's original firmware on the camera the message "Card1 cannot be accessed. Reinsert/change the card or format card with camera." was displayed. It's kind of a well known message as I had several cards losing their partition structure and becoming raw after having issues with ML. It's okay, it's a nightly build. But this time I tried to format the card within the camera and got the error message  "Cannot format. Change card1." As the card was not accessible anymore I checked it using two Windows computers. They do not show any external storage media, even in Computer Management -> Disk Management. In OS X Disk Utility there is also no appropriate drive shown and Linux lists "No media" after connecting the card using two different readers.

My assumption is now that the controller on the card has been destroyed and therefore the card is not accessible anymore. It is only noticed by the camera as it would display the "No card1" message otherwise, but the cam may just checks resistance with no actual access to the card. There are no files I need to recover, but these cards costs a bunch of money so I would be happy for all other solutions than throwing it away.

Thanks a lot in advance,
Ben

Dear all,

I formatted my Sandisk 64GB 1066x CF card a while ago in Windows 7 with ExFAT and its default block size of 128kb.

Right now the file system cannot be accessed anymore and while trying to recover the mlv files with PhotoRec it only provides selectable block sizes of 512b, 1kb, 2kb ... up to 64kb, even in the expert mode of the newest WIP version 7.1.

So is there any way to select a larger block size?

Thanks a lot in advance,
Ben

Just for your information, nothings seems to help here anymore. I renamed the .mlv into an .img file and assigned QPhotoRec to recover the lost data out of this "raw disk image". Instead of several 3.5 MB .mlv files it started to recover a bunch of old .cr2 and .jpg files.

As writing to the cards was successful it seems that the file structure itself was destroyed later, maybe by removing the card too quickly out of the camera or so.

Hi user0597, unfortunately the link to your guide is broken. Could you please upload it again and send me the link? Thanks a lot!

Meanwhile I've installed MlRawViewer and really like it at first appearance. This tool displays the number of frames and the first one like described but all other frames are simply black, so my hope is slightly decreasing now.

Dear all,

recently one of my CF cards crashed in the camera after shooting with MagicLantern. Not the card itself, but the file system which was previously ExFAT and listed as RAW afterwards.

Trying different software recovery tools I was able to recover the partition using Aidfile (www.aidfile.com). It recovered the whole layout including its folder structure and all files with correct name, size and date. I spot checked some of the .jpg and .cr2 (Canon raw) files and everything looked good, so I was happy... for a while.

Now I tried to convert the .mlv files and when I open them with MLVViewSharp or MLVFS I only get a 44 byte .wav file and the first .dng picture. The pic is okay in the top 5% and otherwise just shows lots of colored pixels. So my question is now, is there a way to still access the information inside? Audio is not important as I used an external recorder. I've read that ML files don't create an end of file, but as I did a partition instead of file recovery I still have hope.

Thanks a lot in advance,
Ben

Dear all,

for recording MLV videos I use two Lexar 64GB and 128GB 1066x CF cards with my 5D MkIII camera. All cards are formatted with ExFAT to allow file sizes more than 4GB. ML is nightly build for 5D3.123.

Unfortunately I lost data on both cards as their partition does not exist anymore and is listed as RAW now. With one card I remember that the camera showed "BUSY" and after about two minutes I was afraid that ML had a serios error and therefore removed the battey to protect the camera. With the other card I didn't notice any abnormal behaviour.

As I stopped writing any data to the cards afterwards I was able to recover all jpg and cr2 images without problems. Where I get stuck now is that even after trying various recovery tools I see neither MLV nor a list of DNG files as I read in the forum. Further many recovering tools seem to have problems with the ExFAT layout itself.

Therefore I like to ask if you have any tipps on how to recover the MLV/DNG files or to restore the ExFAT partition?

Thanks a lot in advance,
Ben

Dear all,

Right now I uses my Canon 5D MkIII for time lapse photography, but after it has lots of shutter actions I think it might be too good for this job. Therefore I plan to buy a EOS M additionally for TL only, adapt my lenses and run ML.

I am happy with its quality even having only an APS-C sensor. Nevertheless I have some concerns about its battery consumption. I read that the little battery drains quite fast after 200 to 250 pics. So, does anyone of you has some experience with using the EOS M for time lapse photography? For sunrise and sunset I need to take about a thousand pictures in 90 minutes. My hope is to increase the amount of pictures by not using any AF functions and even switching off the display when the time lapse starts. By the way, is there such a feature - or plugin - in ML for the M like CHDK provides for Canon's IXUS and Powershot series?

Of course, other ideas for let's say external battery power supply are also welcome. But changing the battery and having a gap in the final video won't work.

Thanks so much,
Ben