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File corruption due to power spikes?
A friend of mine has a pair of Panasonic HPX-370’s that we’re going to use for a two camera shoot. He’s trying to get me to rent a pair of KPro Hard disk recorders as backup.
The issue, as he explains it, was that he was recording a 2 hour meeting and the facility had a “power spike” during the shoot. He claims the P2 file holding the recording got corrupted, and the entire shoot had to be redone.
Does this anecdote seem credible? On my Panasonic HPX-250, the P2 files seem to be 4GB max, so even if there was a corrupted file, it should only affect 4GB of recording, not the entire 2 hours. Also, don’t cameras have a power supply that compensates for power spikes? I’ve never had a problem before, but in years past, I have gotten glitches on tape recordings, so I guess it’s conceivable that analog equipment was more forgiving than digital.
Any thoughts?
Ryan Video Productions Inc. Rockaway, NJ
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3 Replies
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It doesn’t sound COMPLETELY farfetched but the AC power adapter are not generally the highest quality. But even so I think that would have to be some serious power spike. Like get an electrician now type of serious to be damaging equipment like a camera. Did he try repairing the files in P2CMS? Sometimes with P2 cards often record gets cut short the file isn’t closed. It will show up like there’s a problem with the file but it just needs to be processed in Panasonic software.
True that FAT32 restrictions limit file sizes to 4GB but they are ultimately seen as the same thing on the computer.
Co-President at fourB Productions, Inc.
Blackmagic Cinema Camera, RED Scarlet-X
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 16GB RAM
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Why not use a couple of small UPS supplies that you probably have around already. Just plug the power supplies for the cameras into the UPS’s and you’re good to go even in case of a total power failure. The KiPros would need a power source as well, so renting them would not really solve your problem, just move then to a different piece of equipment. The KiPros can easily corrupt a recording in the case of a power glitch just as the cameras would.
E=MC2+/-2db
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Thanks for the responses. I think the cameras into a UPS is probably the best way to go. Don’t see any point in spending hundreds of dollars for KPro recorders to back up what is already a very expensive camera.
Ryan Video Productions Inc. Rockaway, NJ
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