my pmw-300

Jack Zhang · November 1st, 2015, 11:17 PM

Wow. A sizable chunk of my observations were false... The S-8U93 will do this no matter if the DC IN is connected if the battery is first attached to the camera. Unlike the older pigtail batteries with no coded data, when the camera receives bad battery info data, it will spit out a battery error no matter what if externally depleted upon cold boot, EVEN WITH THE DC IN CONNECTED. Most of the observations regarding it reporting a false full charge were correct, but you need to use the DC IN, then turn on the camera, THEN plug in the battery. (Unless that's wrong too) When powering these batteries after external depletion, you have to leave the battery bracket empty upon bootup... (and this is still a theory)

Edit: It will happen no matter what. There is no avoiding occasional battery errors with the new SWITs. But if you have a hot-swap capable camera, you can get out of the software lockout after putting the battery in the camera after the camera has booted from DC power with no battery in the slot much easier than if you can't. (Again, sorry PMW-100, 200 and PXW-X200 users.) The method I just described to use DC with the battery slot empty, then slot in, out, then back in should work on cameras with hot swap capability.

Jack Zhang · January 5th, 2016, 05:10 PM

Another update:

The S-8U93 will even do this even if there's a minute change in charge from background drain. It will successfully boot one day, then a minute change in charge will cause a battery error. Temperature fluctuations can cause this too! HAVE THAT D-TAP TROUBLESHOOTING CABLE OR YOUR BC-U1 DC CABLE READY.

Hot swapping is the only way to solve this, and the Sony engineers have made that hard on newer XDCAM series cameras excluding the 4K models.

Andrew Smith · January 7th, 2016, 12:28 AM

What those Sony engineers have done regarding battery compatibility is right up there with the Adobe Illustrator programmers encrypting the text content within the Illustrator file format in order to frustrate the Corel Draw programmers when they were updating their import filter for the next version of Illustrator.

It's fun and games in a competitive industry. Probably a lot of swearing and/or giggles behind the scenes, too.

Andrew

November 1st, 2015, 11:17 PM	#46
Jack Zhang Inner Circle Join Date: May 2005 Location: Burnaby, BC, Canada Posts: 3,053	Re: my pmw-300 Wow. A sizable chunk of my observations were false... The S-8U93 will do this no matter if the DC IN is connected if the battery is first attached to the camera. Unlike the older pigtail batteries with no coded data, when the camera receives bad battery info data, it will spit out a battery error no matter what if externally depleted upon cold boot, EVEN WITH THE DC IN CONNECTED. Most of the observations regarding it reporting a false full charge were correct, but you need to use the DC IN, then turn on the camera, THEN plug in the battery. (Unless that's wrong too) When powering these batteries after external depletion, you have to leave the battery bracket empty upon bootup... (and this is still a theory) Edit: It will happen no matter what. There is no avoiding occasional battery errors with the new SWITs. But if you have a hot-swap capable camera, you can get out of the software lockout after putting the battery in the camera after the camera has booted from DC power with no battery in the slot much easier than if you can't. (Again, sorry PMW-100, 200 and PXW-X200 users.) The method I just described to use DC with the battery slot empty, then slot in, out, then back in should work on cameras with hot swap capability. Last edited by Jack Zhang; November 2nd, 2015 at 04:55 AM.

January 5th, 2016, 05:10 PM	#47
Jack Zhang Inner Circle Join Date: May 2005 Location: Burnaby, BC, Canada Posts: 3,053	Re: my pmw-300 Another update: The S-8U93 will even do this even if there's a minute change in charge from background drain. It will successfully boot one day, then a minute change in charge will cause a battery error. Temperature fluctuations can cause this too! HAVE THAT D-TAP TROUBLESHOOTING CABLE OR YOUR BC-U1 DC CABLE READY. Hot swapping is the only way to solve this, and the Sony engineers have made that hard on newer XDCAM series cameras excluding the 4K models.

January 7th, 2016, 12:28 AM	#48
Andrew Smith Equal Opportunity Offender Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Brisbane, Australia Posts: 3,068	Re: my pmw-300 What those Sony engineers have done regarding battery compatibility is right up there with the Adobe Illustrator programmers encrypting the text content within the Illustrator file format in order to frustrate the Corel Draw programmers when they were updating their import filter for the next version of Illustrator. It's fun and games in a competitive industry. Probably a lot of swearing and/or giggles behind the scenes, too. Andrew