Failed P2 Card!!!

[Nature Shooter]

After speaking with someone from Panasonic's service line, it appears that I have a failed P2 card.

The problem started last night when I was importing some clips into FCP over firewire. About halfway through the clips the import stopped and the message P2 MICON ERROR showed up on the camera screen. After that the camera wouldn't recognize the card, it just says INCOMPATIBLE CARD. It won't let me format it and even my PC laptop won't recognize it.

This really has me worried. I thought the P2 cards were made from the best possible SD cards, are rock solid and have been thoroughly tested??

I've been extremely happy with the footage from the camera thus far and was even considering purchasing an HPX-500 in the near future, but this has made me a little leery.

Has this happened to anyone else??

BTW the card is a 16gig

[David Saraceno]

I doubt that there is a 100% expectation for any p2 card.

There are reports here and elsewhere of failed p2 cards, 16 gb included

[cheezweezl]

tapes fail too..... as do hard drives, cd/dvd-r's, memory cards, film stock, etc. that's life... i have had to reshoot stuff in the past because of bad tapes or dirt heads. i haven't been burned by p2 yet but i'm sure i will at some point.

[Drew599]

I had this same problem with a 4GB card a while back. I lost half of the footage for that day because of this same error. I had to format the card inside the HVX to get it to work right...good thing it was only test footage. But then after that on the same card I was getting digital dropouts in both picture and sound. After going to the Panasonic repair center a couple times the card was deemed to be the problem. Panasonic gave me another card that works just fine.

But this has taught me to check the shots of projects I'm shooting really quick to make sure these digital dropouts didn't happen to make their way into the footge. I kind of think of it as checking the gate in a film camera. I mean it shouldn't happen...but then again nothing is bullet proof.

[brokenjack]

tapes fail too.....

Has been the argument for "good enough" about the new P2 media from just about every die hard HVX worshipper out there. While I understand and agree with moving forward to tapeless aquisition, why replace one faulty media with another? You can usually find out if a tape is bad on set via playback, and just put in another tape (unless it's the camera, or bad batch of tapes, and I've been down that street as well). I think it is the level of catastrophe that has people worried. If the argument for P2 is that it will replace 1000 tapes, it's no good if it replaces 1000 bad tapes. I also understand that a lot of P2 failure is operator error, and you have the occasional bad manufacture, but still, this is 2007, and in my humble opinion, P2 has no choice other than to be failsafe if it wants to compete with upcoming competitors. We will all graduate to tapeless in some form or another eventually, just like we replaced our cassettes with CDs, and now mp3's. Solid state storage is pretty exciting, but I don't think it should be compared to tape, film, or any other magnetic media, it has to outperform it in reliability. I'm not attacking what you said. I've just heard this from so many people as the argument for using P2, I had to chime in with my 2 cents. I can't wait for my 16GB card to ship soon, and I'll be setting up a workflow to make sure it at least gets backed up and verified on set. If it fails, I'll just slap a MiniDV cassette in the side and convince the client to go for that ultra cool retro SD look.

[David Jimerson]

Valid points, for what they are . . . but how do you know the "upcoming competitors" are going to be 100%, absolutely reliable in the field? Or at least significantly moreso than P2?

[brokenjack]

The aliens showed me....Of course I don't know what competitors are up to(speculation), and I'm not really expecting the next memory card to be 100% reliable, but I'm sure there are some mission critical application systems used in other fields, that could be emulated and scaled down to affordably fit camera systems.

I'm just playing a little devils advocate here, and supposing a "what if". I'm not trying to start a tape vs. P2 war. I'm too busy battling it out on the front lines of the moot Mac vs PC "conflict".

I think the bigger playing field in terms of a strong market, is archiving solutions that present themselves with respectable price points that match the HVX. I got DVDs I burned 4 years ago that don't play anymore, and I got VHS tapes from 20 years ago that still play fine.

Really though, the main thing that attracted me to the HVX was the fantastic color reproduction, price, and multiple formats, etc. etc. Those qualities are hard to compete against by themselves, and I certainly look forward to not having to digitize tape.

It's funny but I have to confess, I've used the same argument trying to explain the benefits of solid state vs tape to clients and other unbendable folks that challenge my decision to go with the HVX.

Didn't mean to hijack the initial subject of the problem with your card. Hope you can sort it out. There are a lot of smart folks here that lend a bit of insight when you are troubleshooting.

[Jockomo]

It would be useful if there was a mode that wrote the same data to both P2 cards at the same time.
This would be nice for shooting something those things you only have one shot at getting. Kind of like having a raid1 setup.

[David Jimerson]

The aliens showed me....Of course I don't know what competitors are up to(speculation), and I'm not really expecting the next memory card to be 100% reliable, but I'm sure there are some mission critical application systems used in other fields, that could be emulated and scaled down to affordably fit camera systems.

I'm just playing a little devils advocate here, and supposing a "what if". I'm not trying to start a tape vs. P2 war. I'm too busy battling it out on the front lines of the moot Mac vs PC "conflict".

I think the bigger playing field in terms of a strong market, is archiving solutions that present themselves with respectable price points that match the HVX. I got DVDs I burned 4 years ago that don't play anymore, and I got VHS tapes from 20 years ago that still play fine.

Really though, the main thing that attracted me to the HVX was the fantastic color reproduction, price, and multiple formats, etc. etc. Those qualities are hard to compete against by themselves, and I certainly look forward to not having to digitize tape.

It's funny but I have to confess, I've used the same argument trying to explain the benefits of solid state vs tape to clients and other unbendable folks that challenge my decision to go with the HVX.

Didn't mean to hijack the initial subject of the problem with your card. Hope you can sort it out. There are a lot of smart folks here that lend a bit of insight when you are troubleshooting.

I just think in so doing to overstate the problem a tad.

[Nature Shooter]

I think it is the level of catastrophe that has people worried

Well put. This is my main concern with what happened. Tapes may fail, but at least you might be able to retrieve some of the footage, with the P2 it just disappeared all at once. There doesn't seem to be a way to retrieve it.

Anyway, I'm not going to start arguing the pros and cons of P2-it's been discussed far too much. The pros were obviously enticing enough for me to buy the camera and I suppose things like this will happen when you're on the bleeding edge.

I just started the thread to see if anyone else has experienced this issue. I need a little reassurance before I invest too heavily into the world of solid state media.

[dwcwiak]

You are kidding right? We just had to re-shoot a whole days worth of footage due to a bad digi-beta tape and camera. Played back fine through the camera hook-up to a monitor, but won't play back on any other machine. It's an imperfect world. Screws fall out. Nothing is ever going to be 100%

[Nature Shooter]

You are kidding right? We just had to re-shoot a whole days worth of footage due to a bad digi-beta tape and camera. Played back fine through the camera hook-up to a monitor, but won't play back on any other machine. It's an imperfect world. Screws fall out. Nothing is ever going to be 100%


I realize things happen that you can't predict. But I'd like to know just how much a chance there is of this happening. Nothing will ever be 100%, but the difference between being 95% and 99% reliable means a lot of time and money. So I think the question is worth asking other members.

[dregenthal]

Sound like a FCP issue to me but, rather than speculate further, I'd be more interested in hearing what Panasonic determines when they evaluate your card . . . please let us know the final outcome?


After speaking with someone from Panasonic's service line, it appears that I have a failed P2 card.

The problem started last night when I was importing some clips into FCP over firewire. About halfway through the clips the import stopped and the message P2 MICON ERROR showed up on the camera screen. After that the camera wouldn't recognize the card, it just says INCOMPATIBLE CARD. It won't let me format it and even my PC laptop won't recognize it.

This really has me worried. I thought the P2 cards were made from the best possible SD cards, are rock solid and have been thoroughly tested??

I've been extremely happy with the footage from the camera thus far and was even considering purchasing an HPX-500 in the near future, but this has made me a little leery.

Has this happened to anyone else??

BTW the card is a 16gig

[Spartacus]

It would be useful if there was a mode that wrote the same data to both P2 cards at the same time.
This would be nice for shooting something those things you only have one shot at getting. Kind of like having a raid1 setup.

This idea should get A LOT of attention!

[Drew599]

Its not a FCP issue because this exact same thing happened to me and the cards hadn't had any contact with a Mac. It all happens out in the field inside the camera.

[brokenjack]

It's an imperfect world. Screws fall out. Nothing is ever going to be 100%

That's what you get for spilling paint in the garage.

[dregenthal]

Its not a FCP issue because this exact same thing happened to me and the cards hadn't had any contact with a Mac. It all happens out in the field inside the camera.


No doubt you are correct.

I am still interested in learning what Panasonic discovers.

[AshG]

As far as DV, I have shot more than anyone on planet earth and I can tell you that in almost every case, a bad tape is cause by user error. Dirty heads, improper storage, misaligned heads, etc. are not a fault of the medium but the user. I personally, in well over 5,000 hours of shooting, have never lost an entire shoot. I had a camera alignment issue but dumped all the tapes to another deck. I have had drop outs, tape jams, etc. etc. but when the data is 1's and 0's, it is gone forever when lost.

This is going to be an ongoing problem. Tapeless (I have gone about 1/3rd tapeless now) has gotten cheap but archival back-up still isnt. For all my tapeless stuff, I store on a sophisticated RAID that is backed up to data tape. You are looking at a 10K investment easy...


ash =o)

[dwcwiak]

According to Sony, Panisonic, and TDK the failure rate for tape is about 5 - 8%. I can't find any info on P2 card, but from looking at a few boards and asking around I seems to be 2%. It seem like most P2 issuses are either user error or software related.

[dantewaters]

I'll add what a friend told me about a year ago about SD cards for my 20D. He said it's better to have two 2gigs than one 4gig, simply because if info it lost it wont be 1000's of pics but maybe hundreds. So now this is making me re-think my purchase order... instead of getting 2 16gig cards I should get four 8gigs.

This way I am dumping more, but the risk of losing an entire 2hrs of footage is less likely. Just my 2 cents.