Design flaw in the sony avchd HRX-MC50? at DVinfo.net

Wendy Andersen · May 5th, 2011, 02:35 AM

Hello everyone,
I bought a SONY HXR-MC50E camera 9 months ago, and have discovered what seems to me to be a major design flaw - given that the camera is so lightweight and inexpensive it is clearly targeting the low budget documentary maker - usually a guy (or gal) working alone in the field.

there is an automatic setting which breaks up your footage after 10 minutes, and creates a new file to avoid overly large files. After rereading the manual several times, I can find no way to override this. However, when the files are put back to back, there is a gap, about one second with no visual or audio - if the gap happens to fall mid sentence in an interview, there is no recovery. can be disastrous if the interviewee has just said something important. as I work alone often, I can't monitor the camera and stop and restart at 9 mins 50 seconds each time!

but, more worryingly when I leave the camera running on a tripod while i'm conducting an interview, the footage i get after the 10min 'jump' is unstable. sometimes its fine, but about half the time, what I get is shaking/vibrating visual footage. UNUSABLE. and I have yet to find any way to fix it. the audio is fine but the visual is bizarre.

has anyone else experienced this? did you find a solution?
look forward to hearing from you. and apologies to the administrator if this is posted in the wrong heading - I couldn't find a general sony camera section, or one for this particular camera... cheers.

Piotr Wozniacki · May 5th, 2011, 08:49 AM

Wendy,

You've posted to NTRF, I'm afraid :)

Nevertheless, it might help if you know that most non-tape-based cameras (and I assume this applies to yours) always record takes divided into files of a size not exceeding ca 4GB. This is the FAT32 limit, and it's used for two reasons:

- compatibility with editing platforms that do not support NTFS's larger file size
- protecting user's material: should anything go wrong with a file, it'll be limited to just a single "chunk" of the take, and NOT the entire recording.

Whether the <=4GB size limit translates to 10 minutes or less or more, depends of course on the bit rate the camera's encoder is using.

HTH,

Piotr

Wendy Andersen · May 5th, 2011, 10:34 AM

@Piotr,
i did realise that this was not quite the right page, the camera is avchd, but i couldn't find a page for my specific cam. any suggestions within dvinfo?

as for the 4 gb limit for files for fat32, that is exactly the automatic feature i mean, but with some cameras you can overide this, or at least, they do not interrupt the footage...
cheers,w

May 5th, 2011, 02:35 AM	#1
Wendy Andersen New Boot Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Andalucia Spain Posts: 8	Design flaw in the sony avchd HRX-MC50? Hello everyone, I bought a SONY HXR-MC50E camera 9 months ago, and have discovered what seems to me to be a major design flaw - given that the camera is so lightweight and inexpensive it is clearly targeting the low budget documentary maker - usually a guy (or gal) working alone in the field. there is an automatic setting which breaks up your footage after 10 minutes, and creates a new file to avoid overly large files. After rereading the manual several times, I can find no way to override this. However, when the files are put back to back, there is a gap, about one second with no visual or audio - if the gap happens to fall mid sentence in an interview, there is no recovery. can be disastrous if the interviewee has just said something important. as I work alone often, I can't monitor the camera and stop and restart at 9 mins 50 seconds each time! but, more worryingly when I leave the camera running on a tripod while i'm conducting an interview, the footage i get after the 10min 'jump' is unstable. sometimes its fine, but about half the time, what I get is shaking/vibrating visual footage. UNUSABLE. and I have yet to find any way to fix it. the audio is fine but the visual is bizarre. has anyone else experienced this? did you find a solution? look forward to hearing from you. and apologies to the administrator if this is posted in the wrong heading - I couldn't find a general sony camera section, or one for this particular camera... cheers.

May 5th, 2011, 08:49 AM	#2
Piotr Wozniacki Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Poland Posts: 4,086	Re: Design flaw in the sony avchd HRX-MC50? Wendy, You've posted to NTRF, I'm afraid :) Nevertheless, it might help if you know that most non-tape-based cameras (and I assume this applies to yours) always record takes divided into files of a size not exceeding ca 4GB. This is the FAT32 limit, and it's used for two reasons: - compatibility with editing platforms that do not support NTFS's larger file size - protecting user's material: should anything go wrong with a file, it'll be limited to just a single "chunk" of the take, and NOT the entire recording. Whether the <=4GB size limit translates to 10 minutes or less or more, depends of course on the bit rate the camera's encoder is using. HTH, Piotr __________________ Sony PXW-FS7 \| DaVinci Resolve Studio; Magix Vegas Pro; i7-5960X CPU; 64 GB RAM; 2x GTX 1080 8GB GPU; Decklink 4K Extreme 12G; 4x 3TB WD Black in RAID 0; 1TB M.2 NVMe cache drive

May 5th, 2011, 10:34 AM	#3
Wendy Andersen New Boot Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Andalucia Spain Posts: 8	Re: Design flaw in the sony avchd HRX-MC50? @Piotr, i did realise that this was not quite the right page, the camera is avchd, but i couldn't find a page for my specific cam. any suggestions within dvinfo? as for the 4 gb limit for files for fat32, that is exactly the automatic feature i mean, but with some cameras you can overide this, or at least, they do not interrupt the footage... cheers,w