Of course it was my fault: I connected the Xacti to my Mac via the USB cable while the camera was on. The Mac displayed the Xacti folder which opened showing a list of all the clips and stills. I then created a new folder on my desktop and dragged/dropped the contents of the Xacti folder to the new folder. A spinning beachball appeared together with the usual progress bar. I waited for the transfer to be completed but it dragged on interminably and I suspected something was wrong. Indeed it was: Everything on the Xacti except 3 stills were erased (perhaps the 3 stills would have been erased too if I hadn't stopped the process?)
Reopening the Xacti folder on my desktop showed the list of clips, which used to be by numbers, was replaced by a list of hieroglyphs. Looking up Info on these showed zero content.
Even though I may have been responsible for a wrong move, I think there should have been a warning that the clips were about to be erased.
I wonder if anyone else has had this unhappy experience. Now I found an item called Protect on the Xacti playbach menu. Presumably it can lock individual clips. I wish I had noticed this earlier.
Reopening the Xacti folder on my desktop showed the list of clips, which used to be by numbers, was replaced by a list of hieroglyphs. Looking up Info on these showed zero content.
Even though I may have been responsible for a wrong move, I think there should have been a warning that the clips were about to be erased.
I wonder if anyone else has had this unhappy experience. Now I found an item called Protect on the Xacti playbach menu. Presumably it can lock individual clips. I wish I had noticed this earlier.