GH4 GH4 shut itself off while recording! Corrupt clip!

Well I'm a wedding videographer and I was filming a catholic wedding ceremony that was about an hour and a half. At the wedding I walked away from my camera to check on my B camera and when I came back the screen was black and I thought it had crashed after only an hour of recording so I began running these tests and now I am finding this problem. I have 3 GH4s and this is the only one where the recording is stopping and it is the one that crashed during the wedding so something has to be wrong with it.
 
Understood. Interesting only one out of three behaves this way. I ran mine for about 1 hour shooting C4K 24FPS without any issue before and now I am curious if mine will stop after a couple hours although I don't see myself recording anything longer than one hour straight.
 
thedigitalcurrent said:
I totally appreciate that but it doesn't explain why the camera stopped recording all by itself. I'm still clueless on that.
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I gave you a possibly very strong clue in my previous post on low level formatting your card, which the camera CAN NOT DO!!!

Do yourself a favor, do a low level format on the card that has been occasionally problematic, put it back in the camera, reformat in camera, THEN run your long recording test.


thedigitalcurrent said:
Well I originally said that the cards are class 10 U3 and I'm only shooting AVCHD 1080p so I doubt the card speed isn't fast enough.
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You haven't said what brand cards you are using. Transcend, if that is what you are using, is NOT a premium carefully QC managed brand. It is the best of the "bargain brands" but nothing I would even consider using prefessionally. But even Sandisk will exhibit the behavior you have a bit of a problem with, if not occasionally "low level" formatted.

I am normally not a "brand snob" but Sandisk (purchased from B&H) is all I own, I shoot 4K in both a GH4 and G7 and have never seen a "stutter". So do what I suggested, it's worth at least a try, and there's a good chance that will solve your problem.
 
Thanks for the help. They are SanDisk cards, I had transcend before and they failed on me completely. I only shoot SanDisk now. I'll try the format advice like you mentioned and try it again. Thanks!
 
Do be aware that the market is flush with "fake" SanDisk cards. There are plenty of counterfeiters out there who are sticking fake SanDisk labels onto low-quality cards. Not saying that's the cause of your problem, but it is something to be aware about. You should only buy your cards from authorized dealers, and I would be highly skeptical of any "SanDisk" or other premium card bought from ebay or some discount store.
 
Thank you for that. I bought my cards from Samys Camera so I doubt they are counterfeit. I tried Bruce's advice with formatting the card on my Mac using the software he suggested and I am going to retry the test as soon as my battery is charged. I will let you know.
 
Well sadly I didn't catch it on video but after using the sd format like Bruce suggested, I tested it out and somewhere in the past hour the camera stopped recording by itself again and went to sleep. When I tried to play back the clip it said "no valid picture to display" so either the camera corrupted the clip or the SD card failed. I'm going to test it all over again and film it this time with another camera.
 
thedigitalcurrent said:
either the camera corrupted the clip or the SD card failed. I'm going to test it all over again and film it this time with another camera.
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Now you may be on track to isolate the problem. If it's the same card that has been "failing" and especially if it fails in another camera, you may have a defective card. SanDisk makes it fairly easy to get a return authorization number and shipping label to send it back to them provided you have "proof of purchase" (reciept or invoice). When they get it they check it out and if it proves to be defective they send you a new one. But even camera stores can get counterfeit without suspecting it.

I had a 32GB Extreme Pro with a write protect switch that broke. I was able to download the invoice from B&H, sent SanDisk an email, answered a few questions, and SanDisk sent me an email with shipping label attached. A tad over a week after shipping the "broken" card to them, I had a brand new replacement.

Now, if that card works fine in another camera, and another card exhibits the "stopped recording" in the suspect camera then you get to deal with Panasonic. The service center in McAllen TX seemed to have their act together over the "audio buzz" issue many early GH4's had. Mine was one of them.

Good luck.
 
Just leaving this here, this is a utility that supposedly can detect fake card issues (such as if a counterfeiter used a smaller card, like a 4GB, but tricked the OS into thinking it was a 64GB), etc. I haven't used this software and can't vouch for it, I'm just relaying it as I found it on the net in relation to fake cards, if anyone's interested.
http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html
 
Well I have probably run 5 more tests since my last post, and almost every time even after trying a different SD card, the GH4 stops recording at 2 hours 30 minutes, unlike all my other GH4s which keep recording till the card is full. Strange that I can't find anyone else online with this problem. Guess the camera needs repair.
 
thedigitalcurrent said:
Well I have probably run 5 more tests since my last post, and almost every time even after trying a different SD card, the GH4 stops recording at 2 hours 30 minutes, unlike all my other GH4s which keep recording till the card is full. Strange that I can't find anyone else online with this problem. Guess the camera needs repair.
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That does sound like it's a problem with the GH4. Contact Panasonic.
 
I would suggest to completely reset your GH4 to factory settings, then go through the menus and set everything back the way you want it to be, when you are done try to run another test.
Hope this will resolve your issue.

Best.
 
I'm reviving this thread. The exact same has happened to me. GH4 shut off, file is missing, but the remaining record time indicates the clip is there. What software can I use to get it back?
Please help! Thank you!
Andrew
 
Okay, solved it. The missing files were in a tucked-away folder within the AVCHD file structure. When the camera shut off unexpectedly, it wasn't able to put the files in the AVCHD folder so neither the camera nor my Mac could find them. All is well.
 
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