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Brand new HVX200 randomly started digitally garbling video footage.
We just purchased a brand-new HVX200 and attempted to use it on our first shoot this weekend. Everything was going great. The shots looked gorgeous, the P2 cards were performing admirably, the instant review was super-handy. Here’s how the last good take looked.
Then suddenly, between takes, the camera decided to start acting up. There was no indication of it initially. The LCD screen was still showing the footage being recorded as normally. But when I went to review some of the newer takes, they looked like this.
Every shot I attempt to record on my HVX200 on P2 cards from now on looks garbled like this. Regardless of the resolution, the frame rate, or the format. Even when I try to record directly into Final Cut via the firewire cable, the footage looks like that, and yet it looks absolutely fine on the LCD monitor (live image, not recorded image). The only footage that doesn’t end up garbled is footage that is captured to miniDV tape.
The only potential thing that changed from the last “good” take to the “bad” takes was that may have been the take where I switched off the HVX200 and replaced the battery with a fresh one. I did not connect the HVX to a laptop to offload footage, and I didn’t even swap out any P2 cards.
I have tried pressing the reset button on the HVX200. I have tried formatting a new P2 card and shooting on it. I have tried switching the recording formats. And I have tried offloading the garbled footage to a Mac to see if it appears garbled in Final Cut (the answer is yes).
One last bit of strangeness to add is that when I attempt to play any of the shots from the P2 card on my HVX200 (good or bad) they appear garbled. But when I play the “good” takes in Final Cut, they look normal.
Does anyone have ANY idea what’s going on here? Is my camera faulty? Is there something I did wrong that I can avoid in the future? Any help at all would be awesome!
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16 Replies
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There is a post either here or over on the FCP forum, where the HVX200 user discovered that he had one of a bad lot of HVX200 cameras… There seems to be a shipment of HVX that had bad P2 connections… That would kinda explain your problem but not entirely…
Not good news….. at least it is not $5k worth of Bear Stearns stock..
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Hmmm, yeah, I did extensive searching today and yesterday and didn’t find much in the way of answers to this problem. I’m thinking I’ll just have to send the unit back and get a replacement. Bummer.
Naturally, from now on, when I’m on a shoot with the HVX200 I’ll be living in fear that the glitch will rear it’s ugly head once again!
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I have had my HVXX since late December and so far no problems…
But I have been using it in the studio attached to the Mac….
Not P2 world yet.
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Just a shot in the dark but because it is a brand new cam on it’s first usage, does it have the correct firmware for 16 and 32GB cards? Could that be the issue?
“everything is broken” ……Bob Dylan
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How did you transfer the footage off of the cards?
Jeremy
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That is a good question, Rennie. I suppose I assumed that because it was a brand new camera it came with the newest firmware.
I’ll look into it today. Thanks!
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I connected my HVX200 to my laptop (after write protecting the cards), and placed the camera in PC mode (or whatever it’s called). The P2 cards then mounted on my desktop and I used FCP to transfer the footage to my Project folder.
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*EDIT* Double-post, my bad.
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That’s your problem. It’s best to drag the info from the cards to another hard drive first, rather than log and transfer straight from the card. Actually, it’s recommended to make a disk image from your cards using the Disk Utility.
Jeremy
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