Interesting discovery about buffer clearing on R7

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.

Wildkits wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

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.

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.

The difference I observed was quite dramatic. 6 seconds for a full buffer clear, versus two minutes!

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

Probably.

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

Tell us what you find.

Ephemeris wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

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.

Hi Alistair. That's an interesting spot.

Are you protecting them via your PC?

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.

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.

Thanks for sharing this info and anything else on the R7 you come across.

Very useful

Dave

Alastair Norcross wrote:

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.

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.

CamerEyes wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

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.

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.

Saving JPEGs requires in-camera computations.  Turning off all corrections and saving to one card may well be faster, as it was proven to be with the 5D4.

CamerEyes wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

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.

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.

Saving JPEGs requires in-camera computations. Turning off all corrections and saving to one card may well be faster, as it was proven to be with the 5D4

Interesting.  I don't protect images in-camera and haven't observed this, but I could see how reformatting the card might help.  I hate reformatting the card, because it resets the folder to 100 (fortunately it doesn't reset the image number within the folder) and I like to store my images on my computer with the same name as in-camera, so I have to create the appropriate number of new folders to get back to where I was.

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.

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.

PhotosFlight wrote:

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.

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

CamerEyes wrote:

PhotosFlight wrote:

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.

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

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

PhotosFlight wrote:

CamerEyes wrote:

PhotosFlight wrote:

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.

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

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

Yes, my two cards are identical. They are Sony Tough 128gb V60 UHSII cards. I have them write consecutively, though, not concurrently. On the occasion when I noticed a long buffer clearing time, the camera was writing to a card that still had just over 300 protected images on it. The other card was empty. If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have switched to the other card to see whether it made a difference. I don't know why it made such a difference that the card had a bunch of protected files on it, but it did. As I said, when I performed the test with the card with 500 (I had protected another 200 images by then) protected images on it, it took about a minute to get to the point where the camera could take any more images, and two minutes until the buffer cleared completely. Once I reformatted the card, those times went down to 4 and 6 seconds respectively. A massive difference. My guess was that it was the fragmenting that caused this, but I don't really know. All I do know is that the effect is real, whatever it is that causes it. Also, as I said, I got more shots in the burst (about 85 CRAW) after reformatting than before (about 55 CRAW).

rmexpress22 wrote:

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.

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.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

rmexpress22 wrote:

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.

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.

I have a similar set up with an important difference. I shoot CRAW to a Lexar Professional card in slot one and then review in-camera, protecting the keepers. Then I erase all images in card one, saving the protected shots. Then I copy all card one images to my to slot #2, where I have a large capacity, medium capability card that serves as my archive. Then, finally, I format, the card in slot 1. In this way, my faster “shooting” card is always clean and my keeper shots are available for processing in-camera or downloading to my iPad or computer.