AC90: "Error shut camera off" message

J

jimith

Active member
I was filming this weekend when I got a grey overlay screen on my LCD. I can't remember what it said exactly, but in short "SHUT CAMERA OFF FAILURE". I tried to shut the camera off. The on/off switch moved, but the camera stayed on. As a last resort I removed the battery. I put the battery back on and moved the on/off switch to on. The camera started up and I got another grey screen with the message "DIGITAL CARD FAILURE". The an hour glass spinning and the words "FIXING". When finished the camera and card worked, but I only used it for about 15 more minutes. I only use PNY class 10 high performance cards. I format the cards every time I begin filming. This card is a 64 gig card and has been in the camera since I got the camera a year ago. The only difference this time was I put the card in the #1 slot instead of the #2 slot. Is there anything I should be looking out for, card or camera?
jim
 
It does not sound like you are doing anything wrong.....other than if it is important video, you should be using 2 cards/slots.........cards can fail!
 
Last edited:
I don't trust PNY. I would get errors from mine and I heard many others had problems. Not saying buy the most expensive either.
Generally available cards I got for less than $20 a piece were 32GB CL10 Sony. Not a single issue yet.
 
I always shoot to both cards, ever since I was shooting an event and the AC90 froze with an error message, also had to remove battery to restart. Once restarted, everything worked fine but once I got home discovered the card in slot 1 had corrupted files. A shame I can't trust it, so always shoot in backup mode. [use Lexar Professional C10 600x 64GB]
 
As far as I can tell, Panasonic cameras will stop recording if there is a card error, so as is the case several times here, nothing much is gained from writing to two cards at once.

Probably easier on the camera to write to only one at once.

Just my humble opinion.

Cheers,

Vaughan
 
Different cameras record to two cards differently. For example, on the new HC-X1000 simultaneous recording will not stop if one card has an error; the recording continues on the other card. But the first cameras to offer dual recording would stop if one card failed.
 
[QUOTE For example, on the new HC-X1000 simultaneous recording will not stop if one card has an error][/QUOTE]

Barry will you stop!!!! Just ANOTHER reason to buy the HC-X1000! (Sigh)......If only I could pre-order it here in Australia!

Cheers,

Vaughan
 
i use sandisck extreme pro, the expensive one for slot 1 and a regular extreme (without the pro) as backup on slot 2. Never had a problem
 
Barry_Green said:
Different cameras record to two cards differently. For example, on the new HC-X1000 simultaneous recording will not stop if one card has an error; the recording continues on the other card. But the first cameras to offer dual recording would stop if one card failed.
Click to expand...

So this is what it states from the manual: When performing simultaneous recording, even in the case where an error has occurred in one ofthe SD cards and recording has stopped, recording can be continued using the other SD card.

...this can be taken a couple diff ways. Is this supposed to mean, that the recording WILL stop if an error occurs on one of the cards, and then you can restart on the other card? Or does it mean that the recording will continue uninterrupted (on the good card) should the other card have a problem on the AC90?

recording CAN BE continued isn't the same as WILL BE continued. "Can be" may imply that the operator needs to restart the stopped recording. It's not a true safety recording if this is the case.
 
Given the comments above by Vaughan and Barry, on the AG-AC160A, can anyone tell me whether, following a fail on one card during dual recording, recording will continue on the other card?
 
I can only tell you from the AC-90. While recording simultaneously with both cards I got an error message to "shut the camera off". After turning the camera back on, both cards contined to record, but the second card did not keep recording while I got the "shut off camera" message. In other words, both cards stopped recording.
 
See- this whole time I've been recording to 2 cards believing it provided insurance against bad memory. That the recording would be un-interrupted and thereby continue on the good card... I'm guessing now this is not the case :(

The manual leads you to believe this, but as I said earlier- when read carefully it doesn't actually claim this. I guess I'll still use simultaneous recording if only to have a backup incase a clip turns out to be bad/corrupted during editing. An error that wouldn't cause the card to stop recording but that would result in a damaged clip(s).
 
Ed Kishel said:
See- this whole time I've been recording to 2 cards believing it provided insurance against bad memory. That the recording would be un-interrupted and thereby continue on the good card... I'm guessing now this is not the case :(
Click to expand...

If you're referring to what jimith and I stated, recording to 2 cards will insure against bad memory, but not against camera software that may occasionally hiccup. I truly believe that my card data that got corrupted was due to the camera and not a bad card. I don't have compelling evidence to support this, but a Lexar ImageRescue card scan found nothing wrong with the card, just that the data was unrecoverable. My understanding is that camera software does the writing to the card memory, thus putting the blame on the camera and not the card.
If the card itself became internally damaged, I wonder if the camera would keep recording to the 2nd card./? Don't know, but I'm stating all this with an air of inquiry, more than of knowing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top