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Topics - scottfrey

#1
I have been having an ongoing intermittent issue shooting long amounts of video on my EOS Ms

We run Ms to capture video of science lectures. Cameras are set up on AC power and run unattended with video restart enabled.

Every once in a while, maybe  out of four times a card will become unreadable after shooting 90 minutes of video. Everything appears fine in camera. Camera's are powered down (and wait for the lights to stop blinking before disconnecting power and opening the doors). This has happened across 3 different EOS Ms, four different cards, three different power adapters (both Canon and generic) and multiple versions of Magic Lantern (all the way back to Tragic Lantern). I have been unable duplicate the problem with a short amount of video. The cameras are always shut down cleanly, and wait at lease 5-10 seconds before opening the door

The problem is complicated by the fact that the only way to repair the card is in Mac OS X Diskutility. Simple repair and we have been putting up with it for a long time as it's trivial to repair. Until the most recent version of OS X (10.11) and it's new Disk Utility. Which will not repair it at all, and I have tried all sorts of ways. I have found nothing else that will repair the volume on these.

I found the following in the FAQ:

Quoteâ–ªAfter opening the card door, always wait for LED confirmation (or for 5 seconds) before removing the card, even if your camera is turned off!!!
Right after opening the card door, Canon firmware accesses the card without turning on the LED (yes, with the main switch turned off). If you remove the card too early, the camera will freeze and will drain the battery, or even cause permanent damage! You will be running random code (remember you are loading executable code from the card), and we can't do anything about it without reflashing Canon firmware with our own code.

However, on the EOS M, the AC power plug goes through the door. You literally cannot open the door without removing power first.

Since it was a few seconds to fix, I hadn't been too concerned about it. However, now that it has become un-repairable, it's a bigger concern.

Any help would be appreciated.
#2
Would it be possible to somehow shutdown the LCD screen (to save power) while shooting video?

Setting the Power Save feature to shut the screen off while shooting video does not work, the assumption being that you need to see what you are shooting I suppose. But if you are shooting on a tripod unattended, you don't.

Perhaps a manual keypress function? Set a timer? (even if you have to reboot the camera to get the screen back, it would be fine, as long as you can stop recording with the record button.

Thanks for being here!