GH4 GH4 lock up

tired

tired

Well-known member
I had a disaster on an event shoot a couple of days ago - the B camera locked up and wasn't recording, only the 1st 4gb file was on the card. I've had lockups before but the camera freezes and you can see it on the screen.

This time the recording light kept blinking and the counter kept 'counting' the only problem was that I couldn't switch off, had to pop the battery. In the past when this has occured, the screen freezes as well so you can tell. but this has me very nervous - how am I supposed to tell if the camera is recording?

I've tried recovery programs on the card but there is nothing there. I'm about to stress test the camera & card separately but that still leaves me with a problem. I regularly check the counter & recording light to assure myself the I'm capturing the speech now I can't be sure.

The camera belonged to an assistant and luckily she noticed a flicker on the screen and tried to stop & restart recording, she then called me over and I said the camera was still fine since the recording light & counter were still operating. We lost about 15 minutes of the speech before we bought in a spare camera just in case.
 
What kind of cards are you using and what format were you shooting (4K/HD)? Was the camera being controlled via wifi? I think multiple lockups are a sign of a faulty camera or corrupt SD card. I have not experienced a single lockup on any of the 4 GH4 cams I've used.
 
I always use Sandisk 95MB/s and I'm shooting AVCHD HD - no wifi. I've had 2 lockups over a couple of years on mine, had an associate report a similar fault and now this one on an assistants camera. It didn't concern me all that much before as I could quickly see what was happening and always have a wide for coverage but this time there was no way of telling apart from the unresponsive controls. It's not the same card since I removed it from use each time.
 
So correct me if I'm wrong but you are saying you're using new cards for every shoot? If so are you formatting them before use?
 
Experienced this error a couple of times on GH4s, but it was quite awhile ago. Happened on two different cameras, on different shoots.

Also had it happen ages ago on a AF100. That time I think the culprit was condensation due to filming all night in heavy fog.
 
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