Go-Pro Hero 3 Black edition SD cards

[NCSaltDiver]

Just bought camera. Made some quick home shots to get familiar with unit.
First, the SD card I bought with the camera at REI was a brand I have never seen, forget the name. The card label says Micro SD HC with a little 10 next. Then 32GB and finally Delkin Devices.

That said. I connected the camera to my iMac and the computer did not see the card. Next I took the card out of the camera and used my card reader. i Mac still did not see the card.

I next connected the camera to my older Macbook air, and heard audio, but no video.

Finally I connected camera with card to my Windows machine, ran Quicktime and finally saw the picture (but no audio - but have problems with the work provided Windows machine and audio anyway).

I read the Go Pro site and they said that some cards will not be read by computers.
Now I do not profess to be very technical savy about computers.
So my question is, could it be that the card is just not compatible with the iMac.
And before I go out and start buying a bunch of cards, so the SanDisc cards work on iMacs.

thanks

 

[yarik83]

portable media drives are formatted to operating system. If you put your sd card into windows then it is formatted to windows. If you film it on gopro and put it in mac afterwards mac will not understand the card because formatting is different. Same is also true in reverse.

You also have to account for the fact that video setting on camera may not play on your computer. Most software today operates on 29.9 fps. That means it has problems viewing 30+ fps video files. Likewise if you filmed in anything above 1080 your computer does not know how to process the file so it does it in pieces (ie audio but no video or video but no audio).

Portable media is sometimes interchangeable between mac and windows but mostly it is not.

 

[dmoore19]

I have always been told to format the card in the camera.

portable media drives are formatted to operating system. If you put your sd card into windows then it is formatted to windows. If you film it on gopro and put it in mac afterwards mac will not understand the card because formatting is different. Same is also true in reverse.

You also have to account for the fact that video setting on camera may not play on your computer. Most software today operates on 29.9 fps. That means it has problems viewing 30+ fps video files. Likewise if you filmed in anything above 1080 your computer does not know how to process the file so it does it in pieces (ie audio but no video or video but no audio).

Portable media is sometimes interchangeable between mac and windows but mostly it is not.

 

[yarik83]

That would seem like a good idea but I am 90% sure that default format of the camera falls in line with windows and not macintosh so that is what has caused your issue.

Essentially what is happening is that while both mac and windows platforms can read files like .mov and .mp4 it does not mean that they can read the card itself. Think of card like a hard drive because essentially that is what it is... a memory storage device.

For mac to recognize the card it has to be formatted on mac then put into gopro.
For pc to recognize the card you can format it in camera or on windows platform.

For similar reasons portable harddrives may not register between platforms. That has been the case for almost a decade now.

 

[RedStang]

I've switched my cards between Windows and Mac without issue. Mac will read most Windows formats. Always format the card in the GoPro though.

 

[drbill]

Can't say if this is the problem or not, but it might be worth exploring. I use a Win XP desktop and Win 8 (ugh) laptop. I recently bought an SDXC card because my camcorder manual said they were fine. My XP system wouldn't read it but the Win 8 system would. Discovered it was because the SDXC cards are formatted using the exFAT file system. Discovered a fix on the Microsoft web site that allows Win XP to read that file system and everything works fine now.

Not sure if the GoPro cards use that file system though, but it may be worth a try.

 

[dfx]

I wouldn't blame the card, I'd rather blame the card reader. If the camera sees the card, then the computer with the camera connected (with the card inside) should really also see the card. The camera only functions as a card reader in this case. If a computer doesn't see the card in this configuration, then maybe it has a general problem with USB mass storage devices, or maybe the card is formatted (partitioned) in a weird way. In the latter case, the raw storage device should show up (look in places where you'd normally create partitions on an unpartitioned hard drive), but there might not be a usable file system showing up.

If files don't play properly (no audio or no video), then that's a codec problem with your player software. Try playing them with VLC, it usually plays pretty much anything.

 

[purepursuit]

Its the card and the gopro. Do a google search and you'll see these cameras nuking some cards. I lost a 64gig sandisk. Now using a 32gig lexar (name?) and its working great.

 

[NCSaltDiver]

Thanks to all for your input. Using your ideas I did a little more research and experimentation. First, my original format was 'in camera'.
My external card reader is an older one and while it would read the slower cards, it does not like the new high speed ones. Guess I get to spend more $$ on an updated one of those.

Any way, originally when I connected the camera to my iMac, I used a USB extension cable, male to female and plugged the camera cable into that. Today, I tried plugging the camera cable directly into the computer USB without the extension and it worked just fine. I don't know why, I'll leave that to you computer experts; but it worked.
So, thanks again.

 

[drbill]

I wouldn't blame the card, I'd rather blame the card reader. If the camera sees the card, then the computer with the camera connected (with the card inside) should really also see the card.

Not true in my case. With the camcorder attached to the computer, the computer could read the internal flash memory but not the SDXC card in the second slot. Upgrading Win XP to read the exFAT file system did allow the computer to read that card too.