Buffer Overflow Problem.

[Daniel Paquin]

I can only agree with Colin why risking to have problems with using a class 4 card.

What really worries me is the fact Adam had this problem with a class 10 card. In my mind this should not occur. The type of card Adams has, 30 MB/s, allows very good reading and writing speed.

A complaint should be done with Sony in having this problem with class 10 type of card. Sure, not interesting, to read it can work with class 4, 6 and 10 but does not perform well with a class 4.

It's probably a question of principle, however, I am more interested to know if Sony will have a fix and when. The NX5U is a professional camera and I am expecting their user will be treated professionally in attempting to fix the problem.

Unless, I am wrong Adam had his camera and FMU disk being replaced by Sony. I call this a professional behavior. Hopefully, Sony will recognize this problem and will come up with a firmware upgrade pretty soon.

I hope Sony is not waiting after us to perform test but there active in trying to simulate and making this problem to occur on their hand. Who is best suited to talk to their engineer, should we start complaining to the resellers : B&H, Vistek...

Do not know! However, I can only say I am very happy with the image quality provided by this camera and in the meantime really worried a overflow or a data error message will appear anytime.

Adam, you've mentioned the camera freezes and crashes totally. What did you do to get it back filming ? How long did it take? If you had to turn off the camera, did you have to remove the battery, did you have to replace the SDHC card?

Since I am using the analog feed to serve as a backup (external recording) I do not have any problem not recording onto the cards or the FMU for a little while. I.e for me to wait until the next break, as long I can quickly get the camera to maintain the analog signal coming out.

[Marshall Levy]

Originally Posted by Daniel Paquin

Daniel....

I won't speak on behalf of Adam or anyone else, of course, but to chime in as your post and my previous, the error came up while in the middle of recording, about 30 seconds into it.

I will never be convinced about using Class 4, 6, or 10 cards as the camera recordation is basically maxed at a Class-4 card.

If the issues were consistent to a specific speed, brand, or otherwise, it'd make more sense and it'd be easier to deduce from where there error is being caused.

The parallel seems to be those using both SDHC cards and the FMU128 in tandem and as I stated, the error locked the entire camera, turned the power off to the FMU128. The camera had to restore/fix each SDHC card, even though only A was being used, and after both A and B were "fixed," the camera then went to do whatever it was with the FMU128. Upon completion, it power-cycled - which I thought was interesting and then I could record once again.

For reference, I was using Transcend Class-6 16G SDHC. The cards shouldn't make any difference whatsoever. Heck, some of Sandisk's have lower sustainable write speeds than the competitor cards that are 20% of the cost. The primary difference is the outer pretty colors, not the media underneath.

Has anyone had this problem using JUST a SDHC card to which the FMU128 was NOT attached to the camera?

[Daniel Paquin]

I just read Marshall response to this thread and can only agree with his comments.

In the meantime Marshall answered some of the question I was asking Adam. WOW! Three minutes to get back to normal, this is a non sense.

Can someone, say if this problem occured only when FMU128 were connected to the camera?

I have an important event to film on the week-end and I want to put all the chance I can have on my side. If this problem only occurs when a FMU128 is attached to the camera. I will then not use it? I've got enough class 10 16 GIB cards for the event I have to film.

In the meantime, tonight, I've connected composite cables to a Canopus ADVC box and sent a DV signal to my MacBook Pro and the ingest was done with DV Monitor Pro. The image is much better than what I had with my XL2 cameras.

Then, I may not record to SDHC at all.

At this time, I do not require to shoot HD but would had been nice. I've got to play it safe.

I still have a few days to think about this. The experience Marshall just went through makes me to really worry.

[Marshall Levy]

Yeah, I'm kind of obsessed with forums and problems like this....I don't let things wait while folks can twidle their fingers around in circles. :)

I emailed two folks in Sony development so we shall see what happens. I'll be calling them on Tuesday as well. I'm going to start really testing these cameras this week to help figure out what might be the underlying issues with this and will report any findings.

The fun never ends.

[Daniel Paquin]

I am going to ask this question, the overflow problem, did it only occured with cameras running on batteries? Did anybody had this problem with cameras getting electrical power while connected to the AC Adaptor/Charger (AC-VL1)?

Two things seems to be common for those who are having this error ?

First, the camera is recording simultaniously on SDHC card and FMU128 flash drive;
Second, power to the camera is provided with batteries.

[Ryan Mason]

Thanks Marshall, I totally agree on the card speed issue, I have taped a couple hours of video with the camera, and nearly all of it has been to either just the SD card or to both, and it has only locked up on me the one time so far. That is what is scary, and I agree I am beginning to lose confidence in the camera. I do have a couple weeks till my next job, but it is taping performances, and if it locks up in the middle of one of them, I am have a mess on my hands.

Other than this issue I really do like the camera a lot, love the quality of the video and the features it has, it really has nearly everything that I can think of that I would want, but I don't want it to lock up on me in the middle of a performance.

Daniel, when mine locked up it was on battery power, and recording to both medias. Like Marshall said it took a number of minutes to get through everything, after the battery was taken out.

Hopefully something will be figured out soon.

Ryan

[Marshall Levy]

Daniel - issues with the parallel with the SDHC mechanism and the FMU128 -- certainly seems so.

As for this being caused by a battery issue....I can't imagine why - if there's a slight spike in the voltage or connectivity of the battery to the camera, I fail to understand why it'd result in this particular issue. I spent a few years in electrical engineering and while anything is possible, I can't see how it'll correlate to this issue, especially when everyone seems to have very consistent problems when using both recording methods in tandem.

Ryan - Yeah, it's a great camera, but like the Z7U craziness, I'm VERY concerned. I had one Z7U that had back (and frontal) focus problems, another with a lens that electronically shorted-out, another where the CF recorder shorted.....so with all of that, and now this, I am not happy by any means and am concerned for the next time I record something should this Buffer Error take place again.

[Cristian Adrian Olariu]

How about the GPS? Was it turned on when the problems occurred? Somewhere in this topic was mentioned that Adam had the GPS on when "buffer overflow" happened.

I use only Sony MS Pro Duo 8-16 GB, just doing tests and learn to work with the camera. one time I had a "write error" or something like that, I was recording continuously for several hours (just fixed the camera on the tripod and hit Rec, checking from time to time). Just in the middle of a 8gb card (20 minutes or so) it gives the error but didn't freeze the buttons. It recovered quickly and fine. I filled all the cards two times since then but didn't happened again.
Those who have the FMU, why don't you record only on it? It suppose to be the fastest and safer compared to any card. I understand this "hybrid recording" option has the purpose to be the safest but it seems that for the time being it doesn't.

One more thing, does somebody recorded HD and SD simultaneously until now?

[Marshall Levy]

[QUOTE=Cristian Adrian Olariu[/QUOTE]

While there could be work-arounds of only filming to the FMU128, it completely defeats the purpose of quickly off-loading footage via a SDHC card.

For this buffer issue, are you implying that it happened with you as well, but with a Sony MemoryStick? Quite interesting to say the least.

GPS on my camera was off and I won't believe how that correlates to this buffer issue, let alone spiking of batteries...it doesn't make any sense and the circuitry has got to be different.

Can those affected start posting the following:

Mfg of Card
Class of Card
Size of Card
Format Recording to SDHC
Recording to FMU128?
Format Recording to FMU128
Other Issues/Notes


My details (as per my initial post):
Transcend Class-6 16G
HD Recording on both devices
Lost complete control of the camera
GPS off, 970 Battery, etc.

[Ryan Mason]

Here is my info for my lock up crash

Kingston SDHC class 4 16g card
1080 60i HQ recording to both sd and FMU
GPS off
770 battery
Manual mode
Auto focus: on
Whitebalance; Preset B
auto iris
gain set at 0
Dolby audio (onboard stereo mic)
Power zoom control
OIS Active
Full data display
viefinder off, LCD on
Handheld
Camera controls
no controls active
l
ocked up 12 seconds into record.
Before starting shooting that day, I had formated both the SD card and the FMU in the camera, not a media empty, but a regular format.

[Ron Evans]

It may be useful to detail everything that would create data or use power. ie, what was in auto, zoom control manual or power, OIS or Active OIS, amount of display data, full , partial or none, viewfinder, LCD or both, on a tripod or hand held, XLR mic( with phantom power) or internal, LANC control or camera controls, GPS, controls active ie peaking, zebra, markers, macro etc

Last evening shot a theatre production 1080i to both SD card and FMU with no problems, picture is beautiful. All manual control( gain, shutter at 60, iris), PP3, OIS off, Manfrotto LANC( stop, start, standby and zoom), XLR mic with phantom power LPCM, peaking(red), zebra(100%), full display. LCD display, viewfinder off. 32G Patriot Class 10 and the FMU, battery was old 970 fully charged and after almost 2 hours still showed 222min left.
Files from the FMU of a few minutes short of 2 hours transferred to PC using the Content Manager Utility in 10 mins played in Vegas Pro 9 native and in Edius slowly( can't wait for 5.5 in a few weeks)
Ron Evans

[Marshall Levy]

Fascinating...in not the best way, but still important.

I have been letting my two NX5U's run for the last few hours, one with the FMU128 attached, the other without...here's the story:

Notes:
~all other settings of "interest" are typical as I can't see how they relate to this problem.
~Recording was HD-HD (Cam-1), HD (Cam-2)
~Everything was formatted in the camera (the ""standard"" format)
~Cam-1 in this use was the same as yesterday, as is the FMU128. The cards are all different for both cameras.

Cam-1
SlotA - SDHC Verbatim 16G Class-6
SlotB - SDHC Transcend 16G Class-6
FMU128 recording in tandem


Cam-2
SlotA - SDHC Transcend 16G Class-6
SlotB - SDHC Verbatim 16G Class-6
FMU128 - turned off

After just over an hour, and I stopped/started a handful of times, at the same times on both cameras, guess what happened?

Cam-1 crashed with the Buffer Issue. Lost control and the only way to resolve was for it to "fix" the cards - scanned both - then the FMU128 (that lost power again), then it worked; same as yesterday.
Cam-2 was still recording

Deductive reasoning would rule-out the SDHC issues in the sense that I used a different card this time than yesterday and reversed them in each camera as well. The footage, after the camera 'fixed' and did it's thing seemed okay when reviewing it. The total time for it to 'fix' was about 5 minutes this time, compared to 3 yesterday. Not a clue as to why the different time, perhaps the amount on the cards.

The obvious is becoming, well, more clear.

I'm glad I kept a Z7U as I'm thinking that'll becoming my main camera once again, or perhaps just not use the FMU128 units.

I certainly hope Sony responds to this ASAP as this is certainly cause for great concern.

[Ryan Mason]

Marshall,

I may try mess around tonight and see if I can get the error to re-occur, I did a fair amount of recording on sunday without the error popping up.

Did it happen to the same FMU unit?

Have you tried to the media dump operation on that FMU.

I do think this is a serious problem, and I am not trying to say the you did something to make it happen, just trying to help problem solve a little.

Ryan

[Ron Evans]

Do the people who have had problems have two SD cards installed or one? I know the point is to have two for continuous recording but has anyone had the problem with just one card installed?

Ron Evans

[Ryan Mason]

Mine was with the single card, and it only had about 4-5 gb of video on it.