Z1U and battery died
 

I was doing a video of a play in Fort Myers saturday. I had a np-f960 ( not F970 ). I was down to about 5min. left on tape when there was a brief break between performances. I changed the tape, and at the time the camera was reading 200 minutes left on battery. This was only the first hour on a fully charged battery. After tape was changed and began video the low battery warning came on and before there was some safe break in performance the battery died. Luckily I had backups but not expecting to use them they were not right at hand. By the time I got one and loaded it and began video again that particular part of the play was completely missed. Later when I returned home I placed same battery back in cam and it was stating I had 180 minutes left.
Do you think this is a camcorder problem or a battery problem?

Sounds like a battery problem, although my old 960 has never done that. But now you're making me paranoid about using it! I had two 960's which were both purchased in 2002. Two years ago one of them refused to take a charge but the other one seems to be fine and is in fact on my Z1 right now. But my guess would be that your battery just decided to die while you were using it, unlike mine which died quietly in the middle of the night ;-)

I wonder if you've been using your 960 on other pieces of kit Scott? I'm just thinking aloud here, but as a video light (for instance) draws much more current it might just have upset the in-built 'info' processor.

There's a thread here that might be of interest:

http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=38967

tom.

I had been using an offbrand charger. My previous cam was a PD-170. After that incident when it died with what I was believing was 200+/- minutes left the same charger I`ve been using would not recharge that battery, so I figured yes I have a dead battery. I then went to recharge the other battery I used after the previous one died in cam. This battery also would not charge properly with this charger. The red light stayed on. I had it sitting in there overnight, still red light, no green. I then broke out the charger that came with the Z1U.
Both batteries are f960`s they both recharged and both state on the charger that they have 5hrs and several minutes of battery life. Now I forgot which 960 was the one that died in cam after an hour. Both batteries state in cam that they have 305minutes of use. I did not use any other devise such as light or anything. Go figure it`s true I believe that the Z1U does something to they batteries.
I will now only use the charger that came with the Z1U.But I will be nervous because I don`t know which was the battery that died on me at an inapropriate time.