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P2 HPX 3000 hot cards
Thought I would just pass on a recent experience.
Whilst shooting a job in Melbourne recently, we encountered a problem when ingesting the P2 data into final cut. About halfway through the ingest we encountered some horrid pixelation. We though it might have been something to do with FCP, but on re-ingesting we encountered the same problem at the same place in the footage. Used the P2CMS software to preview the footage and found the issue again in the same place.
Upon removing the P2 card from the 5 bay reader I noticed how hot the card was. I asked the assistant if the card was hot when he removed it form the camera and he replied “Hot as a backed rock”. We let the card cool down in an air conditioned room for a few minutes then ingested again and everything was fine.
It was an unusually hot day in Melbourne (Australia) that day, where we were it was 41.5c (107f)in the shade, and the camera was working hard to stay cool in the sun.
So if you see a similar issue, just wait a while for the card to cool down a bit, it’s does not seem to be permanent. -
6 Replies
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I would wonder if you have a flawed card.. Was it the only card that had heat problems?
Did other cards in the same camera P2 slot Over heat?
Has that card repeated the same problems on other shoots?
It is my understanding that the P2 card is like a mini raid of flash drives. You have a bunch of flash/ram chips all wired together… So if this is a true understanding, it is possible that one of the wires in the P2 card is shorting. Which would have me believe that the card will fail, at the wrong time…
It makes you wonder what are the odds of getting a flawed P2 card.
And what are the operational temperature range of the P2 system?
Is there software to diagnose faulty P2 cards??
Is the P2 card covered with Panny 5 year warranty?Sounds like some questions for the high Priestess of P2,,, JAN
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Hi Nate,
The card has checked out fine, in fact it has had another dozen cycles since then. I can’t comment about the rest of the cards as only that particular card was written to at the time, but it has performed flawlessly since. I used an application to check it’s validity at the time and it reported no faults.
Has anyone else used the cards in such hot condition, the 40 or so degrees was in the shade, in the sun it was significantly warmer.
I have spoken to photographers since that and they report a slow down in the transfer speed when the card is hot, but no corruption.
I also used the software in the camera to determine if there was a fault in the recording but everything was OK.
I believe that the high temperature of the card had an effect on it’s ability to write off at speed. We all know that high temperatures effect CPU’s and drive speeds in our computers, I’m not surprised the same thing can happen to solid state. -
Yikes, good thing you caught that as you were downloading into FInal Cut. Had you erased the card after that….well, it would not have been a happy day. 😉
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I had several hot days on a shoot last summer and I did notice that it seemed to be a little sluggish as well. My raid was also at the max temp. I tried to do the downloads in a cooler environment and that seemed to help a little. I have used the cards many, many times since with no issues.
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Spot on there Helmut.
It’s lucky that my editor is switched on and diligent enough to watch and log individual clips on import. -
Hi Matthew
I’m in mildura and it can get very Hot for very long , I shoot with SPX800 and only Temp affected issue i had was on one 42 degree temp day,the Preview screen went totally Red, I removed the battery, said three hail mary’s and powerred up again and all was oK>
That was around new years, so did the most recent Firmware Jan 08 and no problems since.
Cheers
Tom K
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