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Sony NXCAM (HXR-NX5) major (?) problem
Hi All
I am one of the first normal mortals to have received a new NXCAM (HXR-NX5U, pre-ordered and received into my hot little hands on Friday 5 Feb). The cam’s serial is 110136.
I’ve been shooting random bits and pieces for the last week to get a feel for the camera. Yesterday, while just over a minute into a shot, the frame suddenly froze with the message ‘buffer overrun’ or ‘buffer overload’ (I don’t remember the exact term) on the screen for a few seconds. The screen then went black with small letters in the middle saying ‘clip recovery in progress’ or something like that. The camera then remained frozen for a few minutes — even after I turned the main power switch
off. This message remained on the screen until I got fed up and removed the battery to shut it down.When I restarted the camera, the touchscreen gave me the option to choose to recover the clip, to which I said ‘yes’ — but this just cycled back to the same screen three times before finally coming back to the same black screen with the ‘recovery in progress’ — which I had to stop again by pulling the battery off after turning the power switch off did nothing.
When I restarted again there was no option to recover the clip again — and no sign of the clip at all on either the SD card or either the FMU128 unit, to which I was recording simultaneously.
I had a problem a little like this on the first day I had the unit when I tested it by turning the power off while shooting a clip. When I turned it on again it offered me the option to recover the clip, but
then the camera just froze with a black screen with ‘recovery in progress’ or whatever in the middle, which remained for a few minutes, making the camera totally unresponsive, until I pulled the battery
off. That time, when I restarted the unit, the clip was present in the menu as if nothing had happened.I did not think too much of it the first time the cam froze up in ‘recovery mode’ as I had purposefully disrupted the cam’s operation by turning it off while recording a clip (something that it should just have handled easily, in restrospect). But the second time I was just shooting normally — I’d shot a whole bunch of short clips in the preceding half-hour with no issues.
Obviously, this is freaking me out — if this ‘buffer overrun’ and freeze-up ever happens during a proper shoot, I am totally at a loss — not only did the camera stop recording, but it froze (thus becoming utterly useless) AND I could not recover the clip.
I was shooting in 1080/30p mode on to a SanDisk Extreme 30MB/s class 10 SDHC card (16GB capacity) — which should be more than fast enough to handle the bitrate of the NXCAM. There was also plenty of space on the SD card and the FMU128 unit. I pre-formatted all memory in the camera as advised in the manual before use.
At this point it’s impossible to say what’s causing this error — but it seems to me to be a software glitch, hard as it is to believe that Sony would release a pro product without testing it very thoroughly. Any ideas? Is there something else that might be causing the issue?
Anyone else got an HXR-NX5 yet? Anyone else had similar issues with EXCAMs?
Can we start a dedicated NXCAM forum here? Are there any other NXCAM forums on the web (I can’t find any)?
Help!!!
Adam Welz
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43 Replies
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[Adam Welz] ” Anyone else had similar issues with EXCAMs? “
Personally? Never.
You might want to contact Rick Young at: https://www.macvideo.tv/
Rick did an extensive test on an NX5 a month or so ago and didn’t mention any issues like the ones you’re having. Off the top of my head he’s probably the one with the most experience with this camera.
If I had this camera and was having the problems you’re describing, and they were consistent, I’d take the camera back right away and ask for another one if they couldn’t rectify the problem immediately. Right now your NX5 isn’t reliable enough to use it on a paying gig.
My .02
– Don
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Hi Don
thanks — will contact Rick later — I’m going to take the cam to the Sony Pro place over in New Jersey now and see what they say.
The thing that really bothered me was the ‘buffer overrun’ message just over a minute into a shot. Exactly which buffer was overrunning baffles me, but that it should be possible to overrun it at all is really worrying, if that is in fact what happened.
As you say, right now I don’t have enough confidence in this cam to take it out on a paying gig, and because that’s what I bought it for, I have a problem! It could of course have something to do with the recording media, too.
Thanks once again for your input. Let’s see if anyone else has this problem.
Adam
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Any fix?
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Not yet. It’s with Sony in NJ and they’re testing the heck out of the unit. Still a mystery…
Adam
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Rick at macvideo.tv said he had no problems at all while testing it, but I notice he was not simultaneously recording to the SDHC cards and the FMU128, which I was.
Adam
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According to the Operating Guide removing the battery while it’s writing to the media could damage the media. Maybe try new media. I hope this works out for you.
Does the camera have the ability to record HD to both a card and 128GB drive at the same time?
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Hi Greg
according to the guys at Sony Professional, the camera should handle an unexpected power-out during a shot fine — it will offer you the option to recover the clip when it restarts. The deep crashes I experienced are NOT part of the plan, in other words they’re a real problem.
The camera is also designed to record HD to both SDHC cards and the FMU128 unit simultaneously. This instant back-up is one of the reasons I bought the HXR-NX5U.
Juan Martinez, Sony Professional product manager, suggested to me in a phone call on Friday that there could be a problem with the controller chips inside the SanDisk Extreme SDHC cards I was using. This was just an idea and Sony had not identified this unambiguously as the problem in this case.
Sony will be replacing my camera tomorrow, they say. Let’s see if I have the problem again…
Cheers
Adam
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Hi All
Sony replaced the camera on Monday with camera #110060 (an even earlier serial than the one I had issues with). They did not tell me exactly what caused the issue (I’m not even sure that they know) but the tech who worked on it said he thought it was possibly one of the camera’s chips. He said class 4 and above cards should be fine for HD recording.
I have reformatted all memory chips and the FMU128. I am currently travelling but will be shooting by the weekend. Will update this forum if any problems strike again, or if they don’t.
Best to you all.
Adam
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Good luck on your shoot, Adam. I was reasonably sure that Sony would attend to your camera issues fairly quickly, as they certainly don’t want any bad press about the NX CAM line at this stage of the game.
– Don
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Hi All
the problem has re-occurred with my replacement unit…
Oh no!
Adam
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