Problem with sequence number ingesting from Sony A7SII/A7RII formatted cards

[lscline]

I've never had this problem come up in 14 years of ingesting cards from my various Nikon, Canon, Olympus cameras.  When I ingest photos, I have Photo Mechanic set the filenames to "{yr2}{mn0}{day0}_{seqn}" with a 3 digit sequence number that I reset to "001" at the beginning of each day's photos.

I've noticed that when I'm ingesting photos from a Sony A7SII or A7RII camera, the names for photos ingested start at "005" for sequence number, not "001", even though I'm resetting to 1.  These are camera formatted cards, so I'm suspecting something in the filesystem on the card is fooling Photo Mechanic into thinking there are additional images that it is then unable to ingest, but that's just a wild guess.

I can rename the photos after ingesting in Photo Mechanic to start with 001 and that works.  It's only when ingesting from the cards that this happens.  If I ingest additional images for that day, they always start with {seqn}+4, where {seqn} is the set starting number (whether I set it, or it's been left from the last ingest). So it's incorporating that gap of 5 each time I ingest from a Sony formatted card (and I've tried using different cards in the Sony cameras).

When I look at the files on the card, I'm not seeing any additional that look to me like images, but it is the case that the structure is different from my other cameras.

Has anyone seen this and have a clue as to what is going on?

I'm running Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 18895 (d0ca74e) on a 2016 MacBook Pro running MacOS 10.12.6.

Thanks for any insight or info.

Linda

[Kirk Baker]

Linda,

When I look at the files on the card, I'm not seeing any additional that look to me like images, but it is the case that the structure is different from my other cameras.

Are there any videos on the card?

-Kirk

[lscline]

Linda,

Are there any videos on the card?

-Kirk

No video files are on the card, but the AVCHD (BDMV) structure is there, as part of the formatting.

[lscline]

Here is the list of actual files on the card after formatting (leaving out the folder names and the Spotlight indexing), if it helps:
./PRIVATE/SONY/SONYCARD.IND
./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/MOVIEOBJ.BDM
./PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/INDEX.BDM
./PRIVATE/M4ROOT/MEDIAPRO.XML
./PRIVATE/M4ROOT/STATUS.BIN
./AVF_INFO/AVIN0001.INT
./AVF_INFO/AVIN0001.BNP
./AVF_INFO/AVIN0001.INP
./AVF_INFO/PRV00001.BIN

[Jerry H]

Hi Linda,

I would like for you to enable additional logging in Photo Mechanic and send us an updated log file. Please unzip the attached PMDebug.txt.zip file and place the PMDebug.txt file in the following directory on your computer:

Windows:
   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Camera Bits, Inc\Photo Mechanic\
   
Mac OS X:
   /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.camerabits.PhotoMechanic/

Restart Photo Mechanic if it's running. Then recreate the problem and send me the updated PM.log / PM_log.zip file by going into Photo Mechanic's Help menu and Reveal Support Data. Click Yes in the next dialog and include the PM_log.zip file in a new post, or send me a personal message with the log file.

-Jerry

[lscline]

Hi Jerry, I'm attaching the log.  It does look like PM is trying to ingest those files under AVF_INFO.

Thanks for your help.

[Kirk Baker]

Linda,

Hi Jerry, I'm attaching the log.  It does look like PM is trying to ingest those files under AVF_INFO.

If you do shoot some video on the card, does anything useful get written to the AVF_INFO folder?  If not, we could have Ingest simply ignore that folder entirely.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[lscline]

It looks like the clip goes into the AVCHD/BDMV folder, as expected (as MTS/MPEG TS).  I think the files in AVF_INFO are database files, for the management of the media files on the card.  They got modified, but no media files are in there, only the four files I reported before.

[Kirk Baker]

It looks like the clip goes into the AVCHD/BDMV folder, as expected (as MTS/MPEG TS).  I think the files in AVF_INFO are database files, for the management of the media files on the card.  They got modified, but no media files are in there, only the four files I reported before.

Sounds like the AVF_INFO directory is perfectly useless to you on your computer.  I'll make the next build of PM5 ignore that folder and its contents.

Thanks for the info.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Linda,

If you're willing to try a pre-release, I'll get one to you with the Ingest improvements.

-Kirk