Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but what "get acquainted" period? Where does it say that on the instructions?? Every single card I've ever used has worked out of the box as long as it's initialised/formatted. Or is that what you mean?

Sony's XDCAM EX cameras are pretty picky about card formatting as some support FAT32, some support UDF and some support both. There's also other factors, so sure maybe out of the box the camera cannot record to a card.

However as soon as you plug the card into the camera, it checks the card immediately to ensure that it can record to it and if it cannot it's near impossible to ignore the camera's protestations.

If what the OP is describing is correct, then he is right although I'd be far more overt, this is extremely poor engineering and someone deserves a few days in the stocks. I also cannot believe that anyone thinks this is acceptable and wants to shift the blame onto the user. I'd love to watch him explain to a police officer that a red light means "maybe stop".

We have found a similar issue with the Atmos Samurai. There's 8 channels of audio coming in on the HD-SDI interface plus two from its analogue audio inputs. There's a audio configuration screen that lets the user assign which of those channels are recorded however there's no real warning that none of them are assigned to record, all the meters indicate is incoming audio levels. As a result one poor crew recorded a two day conference with not a peep of audio.

Bob.

It's in the instructions, and for those who don't read I have no sympathy.How helpful, warm, and just plain lovely.

Canon does indeed provide some warning. The problem becomes the plethora of all new card configurations and then where the consumer sticks them. For example in moving a given memory card between my various DSLR's I have to understand where the card was initialized or I can get card read/write error.

"Canon does indeed provide some warning. The problem becomes the plethora of all new card configurations and then where the consumer sticks them. For example in moving a given memory card between my various DSLR's I have to understand where the card was initialized or I can get card read/write error. "

Had I received an error message, I would have been happy.

Had the red record light not come on, I would have been happy.

To have received nothing (including the footage I was trying to record), I am most unhappy.

Now, however, I know to be super fussy about initializing cards if they have been out of the camera.

The actual XF100 CPs can't be read by XF300, and vicera versa. It isn't the SD formatting.

Grazie

Grazie, you are correct, the Custom Picture files (on the SD card) are incompatible between the two models. The problem I described is with the video files on the Compact Flash cards.