[Adam Welz]

Hi Don

There are serious ‘buffer overflow’ issues with the NX5 that are being discussed in depth in another forum. Unfortunately Creative Cow has neither created an NX5 forum yet, nor does it allow links to the other forum (it prevents me from posting anything containing the URL for that forum, presumably because of some ridiculous feeling that the other forum is a ‘rival’) so you’ll have to go elsewhere to find out about it.

Cheers

Adam

[Adam Welz]

Hi Curtis

thanks for this. I think you may well have a point here, and I have followed up on the suggestion over on another forum.

It’s entirely possible that I had corrupted sectors on the cards or FMU128 I was using and that the NXCAM cannot handle them, because I only experienced the issue after I had clips interrupted by unplanned power-off incidents.

Best

Adam

[Adam Welz]

Hi Fred

can you please follow up this message: have you figured out what caused this problem?

Cheers

Adam

[Adam Welz]

Hi Daniel

Sony thinks my problem is with the FMU128 unit.

I am sending mine off to Sony in Japan for analysis and they are Fedex-ing me a new one.

I used the cam for about 3 hours yesterday shooting on to SD cards only with no problems at all, so perhaps it is the FMU.

Cheers

Adam

[Adam Welz]

Hi All

the problem has re-occurred with my replacement unit…

Oh no!

Adam

[Adam Welz]

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

[Adam Welz]

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

[Adam Welz]

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

[Adam Welz]

Not yet. It’s with Sony in NJ and they’re testing the heck out of the unit. Still a mystery…

Adam

[Adam Welz]

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