Camcorder Tech Issues

[A Savage spanke]

So a group of us just got back from the New, Yough, Upper, and Lower Gauley. We had tons of great footage on my camcorder from the first three runs. There's great beat downs in national falls, and long beat downs in pillow, lots of footage we'd love to see again. With that being said my sony handy cam HDR-SR11 is flashing E:31:00 and format error, and not letting me access the harddrive. I can't upload the video or watch it on the handycam. I called Sony and they quoted me 340 something dollars to fix it. Does anyone have any better solutions?

[Regud]

If you get the hard drive out of the camcorder and plugged into a PC, you can probably get the footage off.

http://sony.hdr.sr1.googlepages.com/

[A Savage spanke]

ya, I do not trust myself near enough to do that with something this expensive. I might try to trade a computer geek at the U of A for some beer, or bribe a geeksquad person. Anyone else have any ideas?

[GutIt]

Bummer, A Savage. Believe me, I know how much it hurts to lose valuable files/shots due to stupid electronics failure.

Couple of things? Any signs of moisture? In the battery comp. or anywhere? Have you had this trouble before? Does your cam make funny noises when you try to access your footage or shoot? Can you shoot with it now? Hard drive sounds hokay when used? How do you know it is working? Is it just dead and that is that and it is unusable? Did Sony give you any indication of what the problem is with their camera when you talked to them?

If you can’t see it on your cam, the cam is the prob. No real need to go any further until you eliminate that as a problem. Always start troubleshooting at the source. I would tear it down, except for ripping the HDD. Make sure everything is dry and good. If that looks good, the camera works, and you have some room left on your HDD, take some more “test” footage and see if that is transferable or even visible. I would not attempt to remove the hard drive until as a last resort. Once you get it out, then how are you going to drive it? Then how will you transfer it to your computer? You are looking at getting an external housing that will accommodate your small cam HDD and then hooking it up. AVCHD is good with a 2.0 USB as opposed to Firewire. By the time you do all that, might as well send it in. There still may be a solution other than that, though.

There are some real pros on here that can probably help you better than I can, but I’m on your side, Bro.

Keep us posted.

[turboturtle]

Call Bedford camera in Little Rock or Fayetteville. Local company and I bet the know who can help if they can't.

[Clif]