AC130: AC130's Intermittently Stop Recording

L

litivideo

New member
New member to the dvxuser forum here. Legal videographer operating in Las Vegas, NV and using the AC130A for all depositions I record. I’ve been shooting with AC130’s for a bit over a year now. I have a total of 5 of these cameras in my videography department. I am starting to have issue with the first AC130 I purchased. It now has 741 hours of operation time on the unit. I’ve always used Transcend memory cards. (32GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDHC 600x) This issue has came about in the last few weeks where I will be recording…maybe around 45 minutes in… and the camera will say card error and stop recording immediately. If you press record again it will continue recording and may or may not stop again. I first suspected it was a memory card issue and tried multiple other cards (I have about 20). It did it randomly on 4 different cards. I sent the camera in to Panasonic then thinking it wasn’t a card error seeing as it did it with multiple cards. What are the odds of all these cards going bad at the same time after a year of use? Panasonic received the camera and notified me they needed to replace the power switch and the zoom FFC. They replaced these items and sent the camera back. Now part 2: While Panasonic had my camera I grabbed a backup AC130A (this one had less than 10 hours of operation time on the unit, basically brand new) started recording with it and it did the exact same thing. Intermittently stopped recording and said memory card error. Now I am truly convinced it has to be an issue with these cards. So my questions are do you agree it must be a card error? If so, why would these cards operate without a hiccup for 1 year+ then all of the sudden multiple cards (5+) start having issues? Do I need to dump all these transcend cards and spend the big bucks for Panasonic cards? Is there a cheaper reliable alternative card? What is your card preference?

Im sorry for this long post I’m just trying to get all the information out here. After reading through this forum it is very apparent to me there are people here with knowledge of these cameras I could only dream of.

Thanks,
Matt
 
Matt
I've had problems with the power switch on both my AC160 and my older HMC150. I've had both replaced under warranty. In my case the camera would shut off when you went to push the record button. The start stop button on the top of the camera continued to work OK. Not sure if this is related, but I thought i'd share.

In terms of cards, I've always used Sandisk. Never had a card failure.

Cheers
John
 
I too do depos. My greatest fear... unexpected stop. Does this happen seconds after hitting record?
I'd say go buy some other SD cards. Replacing SD cards every year is cheap compared to all the tape stock we use to go through.
I got 32GB Maxell from my supplier and have not had an issue. Plus I have common Sony 32GB.

Tell us if new cards did the trick.
 
HI, three years and 500 hours on my 160A and no issues with the 32 gb Verbatim and Sandisk SDs I bought from B&H.

My dealer who sells mostly to national TV told me my cam is at 10% on its lifecycle when I told them I had 500 hours on the unit.

I probably am harder on SD cards than most folks - I remove the cards after each recording session and plug them into a Dynex reader as opposed to attaching an HDMI cable to the camera.

After reading about various problems reported at DVXUSER, I now always record to both slots simultaneously.

Hope this info helps . . .
 
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