JVC upgrade update:
 

Those of you getting (A) upgrades should know that once your camera is upgraded, JVC, according to MAry (714) 229-8013 should be shipped back to you next day air. They shipped mine yesterday by ground, and she said that they made a mistake. So I will not be getting my camera back until Monday 6/5, and that sucks because I needed it for Friday.

So now because they made a mistake in shipping, I lose money. I can't even rent one, they all seem to be rented out, or getting the upgrade in my area.

I don't understand how this can happen, either you ship next day or you don't.

I hope everyone gets their's on-time.

Carl, I undestand your frustration but human errors will always happen. Somebody had to type your address, print a Fedex/UPS label and he/she just selected the wrong shipping options. When you use the shipping software there are all kind of options available and it's up to the operator to select the right one. Sometimes a "giggle" of the mouse will cause an undetected error.

As we, sometimes :), screw up and get the image soft, over/under exposed etc, so it happens with shippers, they make mistakes.
Sorry that that happened to you.

Did you get a notification email once they received it, or only when they shipped it? I shipped mine last week & got notification (from my end) that it was properly delivered, but no word that they have it in their system. Needless to say this makes me nervous.

No I did not get any notification from them. I tracked it myself and knew when they received it. The way to check the status is to go to the upgrade page, and select track your camera, put in your zip code and phone number.

Good luck.

Although I have lost a days pay for this mistake, it does not concern me so much that it has happened. What concerns me is the ground shipping, and weather or not JVC took out the proper insurance to cover possible damage.

That's a good point, insurance is always the same either for ground or express, of course, ground shipment is rougher than express, I see your concern.

That is not true. When I shipped it to JVC, UPS would only ground ship if I insured it for $5000.00 or less for the said reasons. I took out $6000.00 worth of insurance and sent it next day FedEx. So what this tells me is that JVC if they insured it at all it must be for $5000.00 or less.

Also if it was just a giggle of the mouse, this tells me that there is NO insurance.

I would assume if it was damaged JVC would just replace it with a new one and they probabley only insur for what the camera cost them which is considerably less than what we pay.

No, that's no true. In the ship manager's screen the two options are completely different and separate. One has the selection for the shipping menthod, the other has the value for the insurance. BTW, I just tried to run a shipment for express overnight, 2 days or ground with an insurance of $7000 and the Fedex ship manager didn't have any issue with it. Ground or Express doesn't make any difference, for FedEx. UPS can be another story but I stopped using UPS long time ago.

Looks like mine's on it's way back home, except that it's being shipped second-day air, not overnight. So, no "giggle of the mouse-" this seems to be an arbitrary policy.

Shipping
 

I shipped mine Priority Overnight last week. The repair tracker says that the upgrade was completed on 05/26/06. However, it was not shipped back until the 30th and is not scheduled to be delivered until next Monday, June 6th.

Good thing I have a great working relationship with a couple of other production companies with HD-100's.

I sent in our first HD 100 camera Fed Ex insured with a standard "shipping label" included as requested in the instructions. It was returned via UPS Ground 10 days later. So I don't think it's a mistake. Or is is just who ever is on duty of printing the labels at JVC?

So...I send the next one Fed Ex insured WITH an included return Airbill. I got this one back in 4 days with my label.

Dave

So you ended up paying for the return?

Got mine back today. All seems well- can't really tell that anything was done to it, though- except there is this nice "Close Here" sticker on the tape door!!

+Steve

Dwayne let us no how your camera checks out after you get it back.

It took about a week to get my camera back. Seemed to be working fine...

john evilgeniusentertainment.com

Carl,

As Paolo pointed out, mistakes sometimes do happen. Our upgrade center performed almost 200 upgrades in the month of May - a pretty heavy load. We're only human, and we are trying hard to keep everyone happy.

By the way, shipments are insured.

Regards,

Carl,

I understand that we are only Human, I don't need to be told twice. My concern is that UPS will only ship ground if the insurance is $5000.00 or less, and now my delivery has been re-shceduled for 6/6. I was suppose to receive it today, and therefore, more money is lost for me. So I hope that you can unerstand my frustration...

Carl

I understand your frustration, as I too have experienced lost time and money due to someone's shipping error. Just last week, my demo BR-HD50U was shipped back to me by a customer. They put my name on it, and the city and zip, but they forgot to put street address! This caused a delay in delivery. I've also traveled great distances and paid good money to do a trade show, and had equpiment not show up for the show, because the last customer failed to ship it as instructed. So, the booth fee was wasted, and potential sales were lost. So, yes, I understand!

I finally received my camera today. I will post what I find.

Well all is well with the upgrade. It works very well with the DR-HD100.

My only concern is that one of my clients uses Adobe Premier Pro, and APP does not recognize M2T files. One other thing I noticed was the there is now an AB menu item, you can select voltage, time, or capacity to apeer on the VF. The only thing is that the only one that works is the voltage readout, and I had that before the upgrade.

Are you using AB batteries or IDX? I think the time and capacity readouts are only when you are using AB batteries with the AB bracket.

Firmware Upgrade in Europe
 

I sent the camera to JVC Switzerland because of many drop outs. It seems to be fixed now, but I tested only about 24 Minutes of "footage". By the way they made an upgrade: Additional settings of the menu: Battery Info (Voltage, Capa, Time) for using AB-batteries; Back Space (HDV): P-Tape (preferes the transport stream for recording to tape) and P-1394 (preferes the transport stream for recording to an external 1394-device).

I am using AB batteries.

Battery Status
 

Maybe it depends what type of battery you are yousing. Seems that only a few AB batteries are capable of that feature:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...goryNavigation

Is it a regular TrimPac or a ProPac? Like Edwin mentioned, only the Digital AB batteries have this feature. If you are using a Digital battery then this is worrisome.

I use Hytron 50's

The camera works great so far. No SSE, CA. It is a perfect with the DR-HD100. The only problem is the AB VF readout mentioned above, only voltage display.

Carl,

What model Anton Bauer battery are you using?

Hytron 50's

Does your battery have the digital "Fuel Gauge" on the side?

Yes it does.

OK. I think the digital info should be passed to the camera, but having not used that battery, I'm not sure. I know it works on the Dionic 90, which I have used. Why don't you call our Customer Care line and get some assistance. 1-800-582-5825, M-F, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern.

Regards,

Carl,

Ok, thanks.

Carl,

I gave a call to the number you gave me, they did not know, so he gave me Matt Barrett's number, I spoke with him, and he did not know either. Matt asked the sales engineer, and he was not sure, and thought it should work as long as it has the LCD readout on the battery, and then Matt says he thinks the battery must have a chip in it in order to talk to the camera. So, the end result is I have to call AB on Monday to see if they know what is going on.

If it is true that the battery must have this chip, then maybe JVC should not be telling customers as long as it has an LCD it should work, and say, it is only available with those batteries with chips.

It looks to me that AB wants to sell their most expensive batteries, that do have this chip, like the Dionic series batteries.

When I get the info from AB, I'll post it.

Thanks for your help Carl.

Regards,

Carl

Yes, it's possible that not all AB batteries with the LCD display will work. I'm anxoius to hear what AB says about this.

Regards, Carl

Carl(s)

Any model/series of digital HyTRON and Dionic Anton Bauer batteries will show up on the HD100 as a time remaining display. Even the older HyTRON 50 with the bars only % display shows up as time remaining (I just tried one, it's a 2001 manufacture HyTron 50 battery w/bars only display). I don't have any digital TrimPacs or other digital Antons, or I would report on them also.

We use Dionic 90s on the HD100, but we also have a bunch of HyTRON 50s as well, and both battery types initiate the time remaining display in the VF.

But, for the RT Anton display to show, you need a HD100 upgraded "A" model (Carl M, you just received your upgrade, so yours is an "A" model now), and you have to select "time" as the option in the battery menu. If you are seeing neither time or voltage in the VF, then the master lock menu has the battery option set to off.

If you do not have the "time" option in the VF, but the VF is showing voltage, then part of the "A" upgrade did not happen.

How do you enter the master lock section? All I see is voltage, even if I select time or capacity. So I have the options, they just don't seem to work. I will call AB later today to get the skinny on all of this. I just hope I don't have to send my camera in again, it is to costly and time consuming for a what might seem to be a minor fix, (I hope it would be minor).

Update AB digital batteries:
 

I spoke with Ken over at AB and says all digital AB batteries work with the (A) upgrade unless you purchased one of the origanal cameras with the older gold mount addapter. What needs to be done is that I have to send my gold mount into AB for a voltage motification. The gold mounts that are purchased now already have this modification.

This maybe useful for those of you using AB batteries.

There is also a sub back menu that allows you to set the near end and end voltage:

This menu is tricky to get to: With NO info displayed in LCD.
You have to press user 2 and 3 at same time, they have to be hit at exactly same time or you will not be allowed in. (Patience grass hopper) This is really a PITA to get in.

Once in scroll to VTR2 same manner as above.
Scroll to Anton Shut Down change to 11.5 volts
Scroll to Anton Alarm change to 12.5 volts ( this one as normal is up to end user more voltage more warning time)

I was under the impression that the first QR-JVC 7/14 either worked or didn't.

Our first batch of QR-JVC 7/14 units did not work at all (you had to jiggle the battery - not a good workaround :). These were in the under 0000100 serial number range. They were replaced with QR-JVC 7/14 units in the 0000275 to 0000325 range, and all of these worked (and show the time remaining correctly).

What is the serial number range of the unit you have Carl? It might be a good idea for us in this forum to post a serial number range of QR-JVC 7/14 units that work, and those that need to be sent back to AB for an upgrade. Such a list would have saved you a lot of time and fiddling around.


I don't believe this menu exists any longer on any production HD100 with the AB QR-JVC 7/14. The menu combination you listed was accessible on the pre-production HD100s with the pre-production QR-JVC 7/14 unit attached (at least ours were).

See my post here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....&postcount=132 for more info.

CS at AB is superb, and I have had many discussions with Sol and Mike over there. Nice people, and very knowledgeable, but they can only give out the information supplied to them.

The correct key sequence to get into the Anton battery voltage setting on upgraded "A" cams is STOP+MENU for about 5 seconds (just hold it down until the menu appears, or hold down that combo and power the camera on).

You cannot set the dead camera voltage lower that 12V (you could on the pre-production units accessed by the the old menu key). Be aware that unlike most pro video cameras, the "alarm" setting on the HD100 affects the dead cam kick-in. If you set this any higher than 12.1 or 12.2V, you will start to get the blink of death while you still have usable battery power left, and the cam will pretty much sign-off (cam is still on, but will not record).

Set at 12V alarm, the real time display is pretty much in sync with the RT display in the HD100 VF. Set at 12.5V, you will get a tally blink when there is at least 15 minutes or more of usable non-reserve power left in the battery, and if you are using a Ultralight 2, the VF will start to black out momentarily when the Dionic battery reaches the 1/4 power remaining mark. The HyTRON 50 will start to act that way when it goes below the half way point.

JVC needs to make the dead cam voltage adjustable to under the 12V minimum setting they have now (most cams are adjustable down to 11.2 - 11.5V) on a future firmware upgrade.