Buffer Overflow Problem.

[Adam Welz]

please tell us if you or anyone else had interrupted shooting by shutting down the cam or battery going flat in the middle of a clip, resulting in the camera having to attempt to recover the clip on restart, at any time before the 'buffer overflow' happened? Even days/weeks before?

Cheers

Adam

[Ryan Mason]

It is a possibility that the battery had died and interupted the record process earlier in the week, I had re-formated both the fmu and SD card before recording started the night that it locked, but it doesn't sound like that would have cleared it. I will let you know as soon as I hear back. Thanks for all you research on this and help.

Ryan

[Adam Welz]

did you do a deep reformat or just a normal one?

Adam

[Ryan Mason]

I had just done a regular format, I am doing a deep one now to both the fmu and my sd card. I talked to the other person that was operating the camera and he said he doesn't remember a time where recording was interrupted either by being powered off, or the battery dieing. I don't remember that happening to me either, but it is possible and I just don't remember it.

[Daniel Paquin]

When this overflow problem occurs what happens next?

If you have one of the three media with a bad sector does the camera continue recording on the other media.

Getting a message on the screen is OK but the camera should not stop recording. The other recording media should carry on. Or at least I should have the option on the camera settings to define how I want to proceed in this situation.

What happens with the camera functions? Does the analog image is still coming out? Can I continue filming, zooming in/out ? I always have the camera outputting to an external media at the same time.

For example, even with the digital signal, I could be broadcasting the image at the same time I am recording. At the other where the image is broadcasted there is a unit recording the information.

I may have lost on the media located in the camera but I did not loose it all.

[Daniel Paquin]

In the manual on page 23, under tips, it says "If one of the recording media used becomes unable to continue recording during simultaneous recording, the other recording media continues recording without pause."

In the case of Overflow Error, is this what happened ? Does the camera continue recording on the other media available?

[Adam Welz]

Daniel, if you read my earlier posts you'll see that the camera freezes and crashes totally.

It's a buffer overflow message that appears -- which does not mean the media memory is full...

Adam

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by Daniel Paquin

In the manual on page 23, under tips, it says "If one of the recording media used becomes unable to continue recording during simultaneous recording, the other recording media continues recording without pause."

In the case of Overflow Error, is this what happened ? Does the camera continue recording on the other media available?

This is nice translation of "if you have two cards in the camera and one fills up the recording will switch to the other one until it is also full"

Ron Evans

[Ryan Mason]

Just a follow up, I did the media empty on both the FMU and my SD card saturday, and did a some test filming yesterday without any problems. That is a good sign, but the chance of it happeing again during a performance has me a little concerned still. I will keep testing to see if I can see what if this is going to be an ongoing problem.

Ryan

[Ryan Mason]

Well I was finally able to talk to someone at sony, and to say the least, no impressed, he told me that it was my SD card and let it go with that, he said I should be using a sandisk or a sony card, as those are the best quality he has seen, if I had been taping a long clip, I would agree, but he wasn't even interested in what I was taping, just said it was the SD card.

Figured I would let everyone know.

Ryan

[Adam Welz]

when will people learn that with the Internet they can't get away with slipshod answers?

My first buffer overflow was with a SanDisk SD card, and Sony in Japan has provided no information to me that indicates any issues with SD cards in particular.

Urgh, how boring!

Adam

[Dave Blackhurst]

The "easy" answer would be the cards, and with the large number of suspect cards floating around, it's a "safe" first guess, however...

Adam (along with the rest of us here familiar with Sony products, some lucky enough to have the NX5U) pretty well ruled that out, particularly since a cheaper/slower card should consistently error out (mine do on a CX500V) if it cannot write fast enough. It's pretty safe to conclude that it's not a speed or bad card issue at this point.


Adam - hope you have passed along your theory to the contacts at Sony that were working this issue, as it looks like the most likely possible explanation, and should be possible to repro the glitch, at which point a patch or workaround shouldn't be that diffficult to implement, probably in firmware. I've crashed my "consumer grade" Sonys in a similar way, and it doesn't result in problems that I've experienced, but that doesn't mean they didn't miss something in the first "pro" level tapeless cam. PITA to be the guy who "finds" the bug, but I doubt it's a fatal or unfixable issue, hopefully Sony can repro with your further analysis and info and fix it up!

[Colin Rowe]

I cant for the life of me understand why Sony even mention class 4 cards in the manual. Class 6 surely has to be a minimum for use in camcorders. I have been using Transcend class 6 in an EX1 for over a year, never missed a beat, (touch wood). I certainly wouldn't put a class 4 card anywhere near a cam.

[Ryan Mason]

Thanks Adam for the backup on that, the more I think about the answer, the more upset I am, with the clip that was taken, there should be no reason for the throughput of the card to cause a buffer overflow with the camera locking up like it does.

I think I am going to call him back and talk to him saying that if that is the solution and I won't have the problem again, that I want that put in writing, and if it does happen during an event, that I will be charging for the lost revenue from not being able to capture the footage.

While I agree that a faster card will be much better to use, and less likely to cause a problem. I had the class 4 and it is rated as being usable, which does make sense with the AVCHD compression, it is really easy for sony to figure out, so I decided to use it for now while I am testing the camera out to see if there are any problems.

Ryan

[Marshall Levy]

I really feel the need to play the recall possibility like I did with the Z7U, for those that remember that fiasco a a few years back.

I have two of the NX5U's and was using one for a bunch of interviews, pans of a warehouse, etc. on Monday.

Everything was fine until, while in the middle of filming, the buffer error came on the screen. It appeared out of nowhere and completely crashed the camera. The only way to cut power was via pulling the battery as the on/off button was unresponsive. At the time that this took place, the power and functionality of the FMU128 was nonexistent and this did not work again until each SDHC card was checked/closed via the camera and then the FMU128. Only then did the camera do a self power-cycle, restoring functionality as it should and power to the FMU128.

It took about 3 minutes to complete this nonsense and not only did it kill my shot at the time, I can't imagine filming a run-and-gun scenario and this taking place. You'd be screwed.

For those that care, don't know, and perhaps would like to know, there are only a few MAJOR SDHC-memory type manufacturers. The primary difference between most of them is the branding. For Sony to claim anything that the SDHC cards don't work and to instead use their Memory Sticks or perhaps Sandisk SDHC cards is complete garbage. It's a poor excuse for an issue that they have no answer.

Unlike dv tape in older cameras for which was (and is) made by so few major manufacturers, using SDHC cards opens the gamut up to a wider array of usage - and therefore potential problems - and both Sony and the end-user needs to understand this. People can debate the Class-4, 6, and 10 issue through the end of time and the fact remains that once the camera recordation matches to the maximum sustainable speed of the card, anything over and above is pointless and the only benefit at that point is the speed to offload the footage onto a computer.

A-Data, Sandisk, Kingston, Delkin, Transcend.....while SDHC cards are very different than CF card (read my old review if you'd like), a handful are still made by the same few companies. So, for Sony to claim that Sandisk works but others are different, yet the internal components are identical, that's just ridiculous.

At this point in time, based on the functionality of the camera to this buffer issue, and the loss of power to the FMU128, I find it hard to believe that it's the SDHC cards as much as it is something that's parallel between the SDHC cards and the FMU128 together, and/or the transport / recording to each.

I have a handful of high-level Sony reps in the US and abroad, and I'll try calling them on Tuesday.

Having had this error and now worrying about it happening again, I have basically lost faith in the reliability at this point. I cannot have a camera that just crashes for no apparent reason, and a manufacturer that just "doesn't know."

Imagine filming a wedding and during the vows, or toasts, the camera crashes....imagine filming the president of a worldwide Company and the camera crashes....and you must wait....the latter happened to me today and that is just not acceptable under any circumstances.