Caution: "erase all" on TM700 does not always erase all

J

jbeale

Active member
Severe TM700 frustration. I used it to shoot our 4.5 hour tech rehearsal which worked great. I used 1080i mode to fit that length into the 32GB internal memory. Next day did "erase all" to clear memory, and shot another 4.5 hour rehearsal- worked great. Downloaded that night into my older PC because my new one was busy downloading from the other camera. I had not installed the Panasonic "AD Writer AE 2.1" software on the old PC, but no problem, the camera appears as a hard drive, so I just grabbed the .MTS files directly from the AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM folder- OK job done- 2 am, go to bed.

Big show night! Turn on camera, select "erase all" files, completes, says "NO DATA", good... Wait- only 33 minutes record time available? Erase all again. Says only 33 minutes available- but I just KNOW it can record 2.5 hours in highest quality- maybe that means it is 33 minutes until it splits the file into 4 GB segments for FAT32? Well, no time to diagnose, got to go backstage and get dressed. Show starts- Camera op turns on camera and Bang, quits after 33 minutes. Out of memory before end of Act 1. AAAaaaughh!

So... apparently the TM700 sets an internal flag and "hides away" files that have not been downloaded by HD Writer AE. So when you "erase all" in camera, they are NOT erased (even though everything appears to be gone in playback mode). Files are gone, but not forgotten! And still using up memory.

Even AFTER downloading everything through HD Writer this time, then "erase all" in camera- nothing visible in camera but STILL only 33 minutes available! Which was definitely not the behavior a few days before- no idea why. I had to do "Menu/Setup/Format Media/Builtin Memory" to wipe memory and restore the normal 2 hr 45 minutes recording time in 1080p60. Sigh...almost makes me nostalgic for tape.

So, I guess it was "pilot error", lesson learned (reformat when time remaining not as expected). Didn't understand the camera as well as I thought. I would have thought you can just erase flash... I thought "reformat" related to writing sector boundaries on physical spinning-platter hard drives. Grumph.
 
I always use "Menu/Setup/Format Media/Builtin Memory.

If you delete files on a SD Card from a Mac you still need to clear the waste basket to free space.
 
Another user has suggested that if you are in 1080p60 mode (as I was) the stored 1080i videos cannot be erased in playback mode (other than by reformat). You have to switch back to record mode, change to interlaced, switch to playback again, and then erase the files. I haven't tested this yet, but if that's the way it is supposed to work, I would not call it intuitive :-)
UPDATE 6/9/10: Turns out that was right! The TM700 behaves like two separate cameras which have no knowledge of each other. You cannot view (or delete) interlaced files when the record mode was set to progressive, and vice-versa. I did not realize it had this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality split.

By the way, the following text appears on the owner's manual, p. 142:

Do not use the unit for surveillance purposes or other business uses.
≥ This unit was designed for consumer intermittent use. It was not intended for continuous use, or for any industrial or commercial application resulting in prolonged use.
≥ In certain situations, continuous use could cause the unit to overheat and cause a malfunction. Such use is strongly discouraged.
---
I wonder how long is "too long". It was fine with my 4.5 hour sessions, I wonder if that is pushing it? Although elsewhere the manual mentions maximum recording time for any single clip is 12 hours.
 
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this is quite ridiculous that you cant do it without the dumb software from panasonic. @ustein thanx for the tip helped me a lot. somehow i forgot about that option :)
 
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