Is this a card failure? at DVinfo.net

Chris Harding · May 11th, 2010, 03:11 AM

Hi All

I was doing two realty shoots today with just one of my HMC72's and it involves shooting inspection video room by room. I was using just one 8GB card.

The first house went fine with 11 clips and then at the second house I was on my 5th room and hit record and the card write light went on as normal and the timecode ran as normal BUT when I hit pause the usual red pause came on but never changed to green and the card read green light stayed on.

The camera was obviously trying to write finalise data when i hit pause at the end of filming the sequence . There was no error message on the screen so I turned the camera off and it STILL tried to write data to the card!! I eventually pulled the battery, pulled out the card and popped in a new one and all was back to normal again!!! Back at my home office I tried my second camera and it does the very same thing with the card..looks like it's recording fine but once you hit pause, it never concludes the clip! and it never stores what you have recorded!!

I have never had the cam struggle to write to a card...(BTW I had only used around 3.8GB) .. I have to assume that the card failed??????

The current set of 4 x 8GB cards have been used probably 30 times but this is the first card that has actually "frozen" the camera.

Can cards do this??? Anyone else had this sort of problem??? This does worry me, especially at weddings because the camera appears to be recording correctly and the tally lights are on but it only fails to finalise the clip at the END of recording...that would be a huge disaster during a wedding ceremony!!!

How do you know if the 20min vital recording you have just done is not going to crash at the end???

Chris

Tony Harris · May 11th, 2010, 06:00 AM

SD cards (well, any flash based memory cards) can go bad, although usually not with so few write cycles (each memory cell is rated for a certain amount of write cycles - which is an average - before the memory location fails - for most modern day NAND flash that's about 100K writes).

If you've had a failure, depending on the age of the card - you may want to see about returning it for a new one, or if it's too old, you can try just re-formatting it in the camera and test it out to see if it has (hopefully) remapped to avoid the block that was causing problems before (AFAIK not all flash have some sort of bad block management - you should be able to find out if your module supports avoiding bad blocks by checking its specs at the manufacturer).

Of course, failure rates are on average, there is a possibility that yours was faulty from the start and you had finally stored enough to get to that block that was damaged.

Chris Harding · May 11th, 2010, 07:52 AM

Hi Tony

Thanks for that. I have actually used all the cards beyond the 3.8GB that was used today as I mainly do weddings!! The other 3 run fine in the camera!! (in fact both cameras)

I did a read/write test on the remaining space left on the card and it turned out fine too!! But the Panny cameras don't like it at all. What I will do next is format the card in the camera (I always format before a shoot anyway) and then see it the camera will write to it correctly.

It seemed rather strange that the camera was actually recording video and sending it to the card but the error only became evident when I stopped recording.. almost as if it was still desperately trying to write excess buffer data....after leaving it in that state for 3 minutes without anything happening it was obviously that the card wasn't accepting data from the camera!!

The worrying thing is that the camera reported no error!! I would have thought that the HMC's would pop up an error if something was wrong???

Chris

Chris Harding · May 11th, 2010, 08:54 PM

Just for interest, I formatted the card in the camera and it works perfectly BUT it still might have a damaged sector (do cards have sectors or blocks?) somewhere near the middle ...!!

For now it will be marked as suspect and used only if I really have to use it in an absolute emergency!!!

Our wedding season here is almost over as we have cold and wet Winters so to be safe I think a new set of cards is a wise investment!!!

It's still worrying that the camera firmware cannot detect when there is a card issue????

Chris

Tony Harris · May 11th, 2010, 09:15 PM

That is weird that the camera didn't / couldn't / wouldn't detect that it was failing to complete a write to the SD card. I know if it were me, I'd like to know if the camera crapped out on saving to the card before I sat there shooting for an hour to two hours only to find I had no footage! You might want to get in touch with Panasonic to see what they have to say on the matter - I think it'd be something important for any camcorder owner to know (of course, it may also be industry standard to not throw an error but to keep recording and just sending the data to the card, but that seems silly to me)

Chris Harding · May 12th, 2010, 01:26 AM

Thank Tony

I sent a fault enquiry to Panasonic just to see what they say!! It would probably now be a good habit to do a 10 sec "test" clip during a wedding just to ensure that the card is still OK now and again. The Transcend cards have worked faultlessly up to now ..I think more regular replacement is the key!! I bought the current set of 4 in August so they will now be retired!!

Chris

Denny Lajeunesse · May 18th, 2010, 10:22 PM

Download the panasonic SD formatter v2.0 software. Google for it.

Format the card with the options set at FULL and Format size adjustment to ON.

It will write to every sector and mark bad sectors. Once done, pop into your HMC150 and format again IN camera.

Chris Harding · May 19th, 2010, 02:00 AM

Hi Denny

Thanks!! Downloaded!!

The other cards run sweetly ..I shot a wedding on them on Sunday with no issues. However the software is useful in that it marks bad sectors!! If any of my cards had bad sectors I'll ditch them!!!

EDIT: The card that was suspect formatted perfectly and didn't show any bad sectors!!
Chris

May 11th, 2010, 03:11 AM	#1
Chris Harding Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 8,441	Is this a card failure? Hi All I was doing two realty shoots today with just one of my HMC72's and it involves shooting inspection video room by room. I was using just one 8GB card. The first house went fine with 11 clips and then at the second house I was on my 5th room and hit record and the card write light went on as normal and the timecode ran as normal BUT when I hit pause the usual red pause came on but never changed to green and the card read green light stayed on. The camera was obviously trying to write finalise data when i hit pause at the end of filming the sequence . There was no error message on the screen so I turned the camera off and it STILL tried to write data to the card!! I eventually pulled the battery, pulled out the card and popped in a new one and all was back to normal again!!! Back at my home office I tried my second camera and it does the very same thing with the card..looks like it's recording fine but once you hit pause, it never concludes the clip! and it never stores what you have recorded!! I have never had the cam struggle to write to a card...(BTW I had only used around 3.8GB) .. I have to assume that the card failed?????? The current set of 4 x 8GB cards have been used probably 30 times but this is the first card that has actually "frozen" the camera. Can cards do this??? Anyone else had this sort of problem??? This does worry me, especially at weddings because the camera appears to be recording correctly and the tally lights are on but it only fails to finalise the clip at the END of recording...that would be a huge disaster during a wedding ceremony!!! How do you know if the 20min vital recording you have just done is not going to crash at the end??? Chris

May 19th, 2010, 02:00 AM	#8
Chris Harding Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 8,441	Hi Denny Thanks!! Downloaded!! The other cards run sweetly ..I shot a wedding on them on Sunday with no issues. However the software is useful in that it marks bad sectors!! If any of my cards had bad sectors I'll ditch them!!! EDIT: The card that was suspect formatted perfectly and didn't show any bad sectors!! Chris Last edited by Chris Harding; May 19th, 2010 at 08:17 PM.

May 11th, 2010, 06:00 AM	#2
Tony Harris New Boot Join Date: May 2009 Location: Hohenwald, TN Posts: 20	SD cards (well, any flash based memory cards) can go bad, although usually not with so few write cycles (each memory cell is rated for a certain amount of write cycles - which is an average - before the memory location fails - for most modern day NAND flash that's about 100K writes). If you've had a failure, depending on the age of the card - you may want to see about returning it for a new one, or if it's too old, you can try just re-formatting it in the camera and test it out to see if it has (hopefully) remapped to avoid the block that was causing problems before (AFAIK not all flash have some sort of bad block management - you should be able to find out if your module supports avoiding bad blocks by checking its specs at the manufacturer). Of course, failure rates are on average, there is a possibility that yours was faulty from the start and you had finally stored enough to get to that block that was damaged.

May 11th, 2010, 07:52 AM	#3
Chris Harding Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 8,441	Hi Tony Thanks for that. I have actually used all the cards beyond the 3.8GB that was used today as I mainly do weddings!! The other 3 run fine in the camera!! (in fact both cameras) I did a read/write test on the remaining space left on the card and it turned out fine too!! But the Panny cameras don't like it at all. What I will do next is format the card in the camera (I always format before a shoot anyway) and then see it the camera will write to it correctly. It seemed rather strange that the camera was actually recording video and sending it to the card but the error only became evident when I stopped recording.. almost as if it was still desperately trying to write excess buffer data....after leaving it in that state for 3 minutes without anything happening it was obviously that the card wasn't accepting data from the camera!! The worrying thing is that the camera reported no error!! I would have thought that the HMC's would pop up an error if something was wrong??? Chris

May 11th, 2010, 08:54 PM	#4
Chris Harding Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 8,441	Just for interest, I formatted the card in the camera and it works perfectly BUT it still might have a damaged sector (do cards have sectors or blocks?) somewhere near the middle ...!! For now it will be marked as suspect and used only if I really have to use it in an absolute emergency!!! Our wedding season here is almost over as we have cold and wet Winters so to be safe I think a new set of cards is a wise investment!!! It's still worrying that the camera firmware cannot detect when there is a card issue???? Chris

May 11th, 2010, 09:15 PM	#5
Tony Harris New Boot Join Date: May 2009 Location: Hohenwald, TN Posts: 20	That is weird that the camera didn't / couldn't / wouldn't detect that it was failing to complete a write to the SD card. I know if it were me, I'd like to know if the camera crapped out on saving to the card before I sat there shooting for an hour to two hours only to find I had no footage! You might want to get in touch with Panasonic to see what they have to say on the matter - I think it'd be something important for any camcorder owner to know (of course, it may also be industry standard to not throw an error but to keep recording and just sending the data to the card, but that seems silly to me)

May 12th, 2010, 01:26 AM	#6
Chris Harding Inner Circle Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 8,441	Thank Tony I sent a fault enquiry to Panasonic just to see what they say!! It would probably now be a good habit to do a 10 sec "test" clip during a wedding just to ensure that the card is still OK now and again. The Transcend cards have worked faultlessly up to now ..I think more regular replacement is the key!! I bought the current set of 4 in August so they will now be retired!! Chris

May 18th, 2010, 10:22 PM	#7
Denny Lajeunesse Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Kelowna, BC [Canada, Eh!] Posts: 257	Download the panasonic SD formatter v2.0 software. Google for it. Format the card with the options set at FULL and Format size adjustment to ON. It will write to every sector and mark bad sectors. Once done, pop into your HMC150 and format again IN camera.