[George Griswold]

Crash City… make and edit and it crashes.. 4 times this morning. I would not have switched to 10.5.7 except I had security concerns… stuck now because I did not do a clone before install. Hope a patch is coming down the line..

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Ken,
Thanks for your support… it seems to come down to an issue with the Compressor conversion from HD DVCPRO to SD… maybe pixel aspect ratio or the like. I just imported as SD SDI and all is well… I will just do that for simplicity.. this has to be safer because who knows what will happen with my graphics when I down convert them.. just don’t want to go there… that is why tests are always essential.

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Bob-
Thank you for your reply… I have done that part, but I left out one key piece of information… the project is going right to DVD.. never leaves the machine as a tape output. I have a 1080 timeline, and the ioHD is looking great with output to SD Sony HR monitor. I will look at the DVD test I did again to be sure I wasn’t imagining the softness. The other issue is wanting to cut down on storage space by working in SD. I did do a SD SDI output from the camera to digitize and that looked very good– again could be a bear trap with the camera down convert not being tip-top.

I hire a few guys to edit for me occasionally, but after asking them and 3 others in LA and NYC there is no consensus on the best way to skin this cat.

Thanks,
George

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Charles,

Thanks for those observations– You are right never to cascade the surge devices– adds no benefit, causes odd behaviors and in fact invalidates the warranty/ guarantee that come with them. As far as not using them– that remains to be seen in my case; my application is Camera and a monitor with no other ties to a ground other than earth (wireless mics,no switcher or remote devices). I have never used nor recommended using a QUALITY surge device in 27 years, but have not had problems when used in a simple EFP setup over the last 40 days. The Ground leg feeds right through the box as I recall (popped one Iso open of just to see) so chassis downstream are brought to that potential.

At this point I think it better to use one unless it creates a problem. As it stands I will be lucky if they don’t cancel my insurance after my whopper claim– not to mention the cardiac stress, tears and gnashing of teeth. In the end a surge event did not kill the camera, but it has created a culture of extra caution in me and my freelancers.

Hope to see you soon…
George

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Ernie-

I have a great Sony 4 position Li-ION charger I got at a Lockheed Martin auction with a D35 (long gone). Great charger…

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Rear Audio Board that handles incoming DC from battery and external DC.

I would do a save as, and then view it since it is dimensionally large at 8.5X11.

Cheers,
George

hdxschematicwithnotes400k.jpg

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Death of an HDX-900: Bad Power Kills

By George T. Griswold, Video Now; New Orleans

The last week of October I had two bookings so I sent a crew to get some behind the scenes coverage on a movie that was shooting in just outside of New Orleans. The experienced crew took my HDX-900 that I had owned for over 16 months, a Panasonic LH-1700 monitor and off they went.
On the set they were on battery power when they were shooting some B-roll and then positioned to get some interviews. As is normal on motion pictures sets the availability of the actors is spotty and involves long wait times. They decided to switch to external DC power to set up the lighting and standby for the interviews. My power supply that I have used for the last 16 months is a medical switching power supply (15 VDC 5 A) that I got from Digikey and has worked flawlessly in that time. I have used it with this camera and a SDX-900 in all conditions with many different monitors in humidity and kitchens with wet floors—conditions that would likely reveal a ground fault if one existed. The camera was switched off (so I am told) and the power supply plugged into the 4 pin EXT DC jack. The power cords from the camera power supply and a 17” (LH-1700) Panasonic monitor were both plugged into a cube tap. The crew then plugged the cube tap into an AC distribution box supplied by the electrical department. When they plugged the cube tap into the box, they saw a visible arc. The camera would not power up and the camera breaker was tripped and would trip when any power was applied by battery, but not EXT DC. The monitor was up and running fine. By phone I had the crew find someone from the Electrical Department to check the circuit—it tested OK. The monitor was OK too, works even now just fine— obviously I would have preferred the damage was the other way around. The damage was confined to the camera.
Let me say at this point that this is not how I power up a setup like this— ever. What I have always done is power up the supply first then connect it with the camera off. In this sequence the power supply has stabilized at its working voltage and is ready to go— to a certain extent looks like a battery when plugged in. This is not a good idea for some supplies that go way over the listed voltage rating until they see at least some load. More about this later on….
When I buy a piece of gear I always spring for a full service manual—at the very least there are a few good tidbits to learn and in the case of a problem I have been able to make repairs without sending the gear out. When I got the camera back that evening after completing my own shoot (difficult to concentrate on that knowing that my HDX was down for the count) I found the schematic page for the board where the DC comes in, a roughly 3” X 3” one with the circuit breaker that is inside on the bottom behind the shoulder pad. I opened the panel to reveal the Rear Audio Board. The damage here was worrisome at best. There is a small soldered in fuse that catches the DC IN from the XLR that had blown, but power from the battery voltage was still getting to the breaker and “popping” it right away. There are two solid state “switches” in parallel that are driven by a logic signal from the front power switch that turn on the camera and the top of one was blown off. This DC input board that feeds the rest of the camera DC circuits was seeing a dead short. There was the smell of death in the air: burned plastic. There is a DC regulator board, but when you replace it there needs to be a firmware update/ check so with an insurance claim a definite possibility I walked away from further troubleshooting. Time to send off the HDX-900 to an experienced and trusted shop.
I considered sending it to Panasonic, but decided to send it to Roger Macie so I could follow the progress of the diagnoses and be able to discuss my options with the tech working on the camera. In the past I had Roger setup an Ikegami HL-57 and it still makes a wonderful picture. After a few days I spoke with a trusted tech at Macie that I had spoken with many times before and he said, “it is time to call your insurance company”. Long story short: the camera suffered a massive surge event and was beyond repair. In addition to the blown devices I saw, every card had physical damage to capacitors. The optical CCD assembly tested dead, the viewfinder was not working—the repair would entail massive board and component replacement and could not be guaranteed after all that. This confirmed what I had suspected from what I observed—the camera was trashed.
Thankfully all my gear is insured with an all hazard, replacement cost policy and am being paid 100% on my damage claim and received my new camera last week. But I wanted to explore the cause of this calamity hoping to share it with others and not repeat it myself.

Power Supply: I would never have plugged in both devices at the same time regardless if I thought they were turned off or on. (That being said, I am sure in the heat of battle cameras and monitors are powered up in all the different combinations imaginable— as far as I know there is no common “right way” of doing this) Having two switching supplies coming up at the same time is asking for trouble—AC line voltage sag or possible interaction of the supplies. Also, as the DC Voltage Out rises that is still entering the device with unknown consequences. There is a branch circuit that feeds the camera logic and a transient on power up may have switched the camera to ON (or it was actually in the ON position) as voltage was rising. This is when the camera draws the most current (inrush surge: caps charging, devices drawing current to operating levels). With V IN low, even for less than a fraction of a second, the current drain would go very high during this period. From what I can tell this is what killed the camera. The power supply tested OK after the incident, but I buried it in my backyard just to be sure never to use it again. The operating voltage range for the camera is 11-17 VDC so I have settled on a Sony V-mount brick supply that is 16.7—a little close to the bone, but a high quality supply. When the Sony is powered up on the camera the viewfinder voltage readout says 15.9 VDC. I looked at the IDX supplies, but did not really think that much of them.

HDX-900DC IN Fault Protection: I was hoping to see an advanced protection scheme where the DC comes into this camera, but was underwhelmed. Not to blame the victim, but I would say that you should not take a lot of comfort in what protection is offered here.

There is a brute force 6A breaker, a fuse and two NTC (negative temperature coefficient) thermistors that appear to be for inrush current protection. The thermistors protect only the ECU (CF201) and the external DC Hirose jack (CF202). The main incoming unregulated DC inside the camera is always “protected” by the breaker (CB201) for battery and EXT DC and additionally a fuse (F201) when powered by the external DC jack. When powered with a battery the breaker (CB201) alone protects DC. All the devices are thermal / current actuated and have a time delay before they kick in. Whatever the cause for the degraded DC IN these safeguards failed to save the $27,000 camera.
See schematic in attached JPEG with components marked.

Takeaway:

-Use batteries all the time for the ultimate in safety. Not always practical.
-When using a power supply, have it powered up right from the start so if you or a helpful assistant plugs it into your camera it is up and running.
-Power up one device at a time.
-Double check integrity of the location grounds.
-Have Camera PS and Monitor on the same outlet, branch circuit or surge protector. Not essential, but puts both of these interconnected devices on the same power phase and on the same ground.
-Use a high Quality Surge Protector like the ISOBAR ULTRA. In 27 years in television I have never used nor have I seen anyone use a surge protector when powering gear in the field, but why not? Tripp-Lite makes a small Isomax Ultra two outlet unit that you can get for $50 on Ebay. I got two.

I hope this helps somebody out there in the future. Be careful out there!
George Griswold

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

Ernie,
I could not agree with you more– the Batteries For Broadcast big batteries are fantastic. I have their batteries (8) but not a B4B AC supply. I just got a Sony brick type– AC10 that is working out. In what sequence to you connect and power up?
George

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

B&H is great– I have bought thousands of $$$ from them and never a problem, never. They might get a bit weird about sending a $26,000 camera overseas, but there are ways to deal with those concerns.

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana

[George Griswold]

I too lost SDI audio capture through ioHD with 10.5.3. The new AJA driver fixed the problem.

George Griswold
http://www.videonow.info
New Orleans, Louisiana