A6600 zero byte video file size

[aj67]

Recently bought an A6600.  It's my first serious camera.  My wife is a teacher and has to record lots of YouTube videos for students while we're stuck at home.  I used that as excuse to buy the camera I've wanted for a while.  I'm still learning how to use the camera, but I love it so far.  I only have 1 problem, but it's a big deal.  About 5% of recordings fail.  Everything on the camera looks normal during the recording.  But when we load the SD card in a computer for editing, we find either a zero byte size file or some very small like 100 kb.

I initially suspected a bad SD card, but we've now had the issue with multiple cards.  I've tried a SanDisk Extreme 256GB UHS-I, Sony M Series UHS-II 128GB, and several cheap MicroCenter cards.  I've hit the problem with all of those cards.  I've reformatted the cards multiple times from the camera.  I've also tried reading the cards on multiple pc's using multiple sd card adapters, but it hasn't helped.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?  Or did i possibly just get a bad camera?

[Olaf W.]

The video files are inside a „database“ on the SD card and can‘t read without special software or knowledge. Use the Sony apps.

[star4514]

I hook up my a6600 directly to the computer with the usb cable that came with the camera. In Windows Explorer, the USB drive shows several folders. While the still photos are found in a subfolder under DCIM, the videos are located under PRIVATE/M4ROOT/CLIP. In that folder are two file types, the xxxx.xml with 2kb and the large video files xxxx.mp4  Is that where you are looking?

You don't need special software or knowledge to find and copy the .mp4 files from the card to the computer. Just use windows explorer and the usb cable, and copy and paste.

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[Olaf W.]

If you have several video they are all embedded in the MP4 container, at least with my A7ii and on my Mac. I had to separate them manually (using Quicktime in my case).

[star4514]

On 4/29/2020 at 4:45 PM, aj67 said:

 About 5% of recordings fail.  Everything on the camera looks normal during the recording.  But when we load the SD card in a computer for editing, we find either a zero byte size file or some very small like 100 kb.

I initially suspected a bad SD card, but we've now had the issue with multiple cards.  I've tried a SanDisk Extreme 256GB UHS-I, Sony M Series UHS-II 128GB, and several cheap MicroCenter cards.  I've hit the problem with all of those cards.  I've reformatted the cards multiple times from the camera.  I've also tried reading the cards on multiple pc's using multiple sd card adapters, but it hasn't helped.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?  Or did i possibly just get a bad camera?

For your failed recordings, what extensions do the small files have and do they have the correct timestamp? Are the in the same folder as your successful recordings?

While I have  not taken a lot of videos since I got the camera in January, I have on occasion thought I have taken a video but in fact the recording never started because I did not press the record button hard enough. It is recessed to avoid accidental starts (which I also have had experienced).

I use a Lexar Professional 32 GB card with 600x speed. It has never failed me either with this camera or my previous NEX6 camera.

Note that you can also take two quality videos at the same time. The lower quality, e.g.for sharing, is put in the folder SUB under the M4ROOT folder. Only videos of type .mp4 are there.

[star4514]

On 4/29/2020 at 11:48 PM, Olaf W. said:

If you have several video they are all embedded in the MP4 container, at least with my A7ii and on my Mac. I had to separate them manually (using Quicktime in my case).

I did not realize it was different for the A7ii. Both with the NEX-6 I had and the a6600 I am now using the videos are separate and easily accessible immediately.

[Olaf W.]

Maybe it depends on the used video format. I will check this at another time. 

@aj67 Did you figure it out yet?