Interesting discovery about buffer clearing on R7

Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

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Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

Click to expand...

Wildkits said:

Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

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Interesting. Your observations are much appreciated.

One thing that soured me on the R7 was the limited burst rate and slow refresh even though I was using a very fast SD card.

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Wildkits said:

I don't protect images on card, but I wonder if reusing a card with old unprotected images would be similarly problematic?

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Wildkits said:

Perhaps I'll take my R7 out for a spin with a freshly formatted card to see if I observe any improvements.

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Ephemeris said:

Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

Click to expand...

Hi Alistair. That's an interesting spot.

Are you protecting them via your PC?

Click to expand...

Ephemeris said:

I spotted something maybe related. We used to pull images off our cards onto our network. This network then backs them up on Google cloud service at around 100Mb/s (so takes a while). Once it's done we format the cards on the machine in question.

When the cards getting full I noticed some buffer clear times being long. It's R5, using SDCards.

We started then formatiing in a camera and putting the cards away (we cycle through cards( and haven't noticed the problem again.

Haven't investigated or given it another thought until I read tour post.

Click to expand...

Alastair Norcross said:

Ephemeris said:

Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

Click to expand...

Hi Alistair. That's an interesting spot.

Are you protecting them via your PC?

Click to expand...

No, I protect them in camera. I'm doing this so that I don't need to download thousands to my computer every time. When I'm shooting at 15fps, I take so many shots, lots of which are just like each other. Downloading them to a hard drive, and then deleting them from that takes time, and would have the same slowdown effect on the hard drive that I'm observing on the card. Once I've gone through a bunch of shots, and protected the ones I want to download, I erase all the images in a range, which erases every image in that range that isn't protected.

Click to expand...

Alastair Norcross said:

Alastair Norcross said:

I spotted something maybe related. We used to pull images off our cards onto our network. This network then backs them up on Google cloud service at around 100Mb/s (so takes a while). Once it's done we format the cards on the machine in question.

When the cards getting full I noticed some buffer clear times being long. It's R5, using SDCards.

We started then formatiing in a camera and putting the cards away (we cycle through cards( and haven't noticed the problem again.

Haven't investigated or given it another thought until I read tour post.

Click to expand...

--
“When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car.” Jack Handey
Alastair
http://anorcross.smugmug.com
Equipment in profile

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Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

Click to expand...

CamerEyes said:

Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

Click to expand...

The best solution to me for overcoming the R7's buffer limitations? Use two V90 Prograde SD cards. One card saving RAW files, the other saving JPEGs, and video being saved on the card where JPEGs are being saved.

Never had to worry about buffer anymore. Yes, it's a $250 solution, not particularly cheap.

Click to expand...

CamerEyes said:

Alastair Norcross said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I was using my R7 yesterday, shooting 15fps in e-shutter. I noticed several times that it took a long time to clear the buffer. I mean a really long time. Something like a whole minute (I didn't time it then). When I got home, and was going through the images on my card, to protect the ones I wanted to download, and erase the others (I have started doing this, since shooting absurdly large amounts using 15fps), I noticed that the card still had the 300 or so images that I had protected from last weekend's shooting. The other card in the camera was reformatted, but not this one (the one I had been writing to). It occurred to me that maybe this was why it had taken so long to clear the buffer, so I did a quick test. With the card containing the 500 or so protected images, I fired off a burst at 15fps. Sure enough, it took nearly a whole minute until the card was ready to write any more images, and almost two minutes before the buffer had completely cleared. I then reformatted the card in camera, and did the test again. This time, the card was ready to record more images in 4 seconds, and the buffer was completely cleared in 6. This is using a Sony Tough 128gb V60 card, and shooting cRAW. I also noticed that I got more total images in the burst (about 85, compared with 55 when the card still had the protected images on it. This is indoors with high ISO, so I would get more in the burst with lower ISO).

This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. The protected images in a card are not in contiguous portions, so it takes a lot longer to write around them. There also might be something about what happens when you protect an image, as opposed to just not deleting it, that affects write speed. Anyway, I thought I'd share this, in case it helps anyone else. Always reformat your card before a shoot. I didn't miss any shots yesterday while waiting. There was really only one bird, who posed obligingly on a branch, but didn't do particularly interesting things. But I kept worrying that he would do something interesting while I was staring at the blinking '0' in the display.

Click to expand...

The best solution to me for overcoming the R7's buffer limitations? Use two V90 Prograde SD cards. One card saving RAW files, the other saving JPEGs, and video being saved on the card where JPEGs are being saved.

Never had to worry about buffer anymore. Yes, it's a $250 solution, not particularly cheap.

Click to expand...

PhotosFlight said:

Are both cards identical?

Also, a memory card is effectively a solid state drive. As there is no moving head performing the writes it would surprise me if the overhead of a fragmented write would take much longer.

I write JPGs to one drive and CRAW to the other. I rarely do long bursts even though I shoot sports but have not noticed a buffer clearing lag. I have thousands of images on each card.

Click to expand...

CamerEyes said:

PhotosFlight said:

Are both cards identical?

Also, a memory card is effectively a solid state drive. As there is no moving head performing the writes it would surprise me if the overhead of a fragmented write would take much longer.

I write JPGs to one drive and CRAW to the other. I rarely do long bursts even though I shoot sports but have not noticed a buffer clearing lag. I have thousands of images on each card.

Click to expand...

If the question is for me and not the OP, the answer is yes. Prograde V90 64gb.

Click to expand...

PhotosFlight said:

CamerEyes said:

PhotosFlight said:

Are both cards identical?

Also, a memory card is effectively a solid state drive. As there is no moving head performing the writes it would surprise me if the overhead of a fragmented write would take much longer.

I write JPGs to one drive and CRAW to the other. I rarely do long bursts even though I shoot sports but have not noticed a buffer clearing lag. I have thousands of images on each card.

Click to expand...

If the question is for me and not the OP, the answer is yes. Prograde V90 64gb.

Click to expand...

Sorry, it was for the OP but I goofed. It was clear you had dual V90s.

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rmexpress22 said:

This is true for all cameras, for what it's worth. I remember a thread about a person with a 1DXIII and their card was running slow because they had either never formatted, or it had been a long time since they did. Yes, it's solid state and it shouldn't suffer from slowdowns, but they do.

I format after every shoot, typically.

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Alastair Norcross said:

rmexpress22 said:

This is true for all cameras, for what it's worth. I remember a thread about a person with a 1DXIII and their card was running slow because they had either never formatted, or it had been a long time since they did. Yes, it's solid state and it shouldn't suffer from slowdowns, but they do.

I format after every shoot, typically.

Click to expand...

I reformat regularly, but not after every shoot. I think that will change now. I also never used to protect images in camera, because I never used to take so many. Now that I'm using 15fps a lot (with my R7) and even 20fps sometimes (with my R6II), I want to delete a lot of pictures off the card before downloading.

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