HPX2700 Firmware not updating.. Help?

Mike Krumlauf

Mike Krumlauf

Award Winning Filmmaker
I've followed the directions to a tee.. tried multiple SDHC cards to load the firmware and no matter what i do the "update" option is not showing up in the P2 Menu. I've tried a 69mb, 32gb, and 16gb SDHC card. Ive called Panasonic tech support and even they are baffled.. what could I be doing wrong? Is there a specific model of SD card I need for the camera to recognize the firmware?
 
Don't recall a discussion on the Panasonic cameras regarding card issues but with the Sony XDCam series people started to run into update problems and the problem came down to the fact that the largest card that could be used for updates was 2GB. Remember now that all these camera now date back many years in a time when small capacity cards were readily available and a lot of firmware updating was done with standard SD cards. In fact with the PDW XDCams they had to go back to the service dept if you wanted to use larger than standard 2GB SD cards for firmware updates. Once an internal service setting was adjusted the cameras would then see the larger 4GB and above SDHC cards and subsequently the firmware. You could NOT use SDXC cards. They had to be the original SD cards prior to the service update. I ended up hunting down 1 and 2GB used SD cards on eBay so that I could update cameras that hadn't had the service fix for larger SDHC cards. Trying to find new small capacity SD cards proved almost impossible. Maybe worth checking out with Panasonic if there is a card type, SD vs SDHC vs SDXC card/size limitation. Remember SD cards up to 2GB are FAT16 format and SD cards over 4GB are SDHC and FAT32 format. If the Pana cannot read FAT32 only FAT16 then that's most likely your problem. See if you can find a 2GB SD card and give that go. Might work:)

Chris Young

https://www.diffen.com/difference/SD_Card_vs_SDHC

Edit: Maybe a silly question but I guess you are using the P2 Status Logger for the updates? After refreshing my memory I found this is where you can register for the "P2 Asset Support System" and download the software if you are not already using it.

https://eww.pass.panasonic.co.jp/pr...ad/EN/ep2main/soft/hpx2700/hpx2700verup_e.pdf
 
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Yeah the HPX2700 can read SDHC as the SDHC logo is above the card slot :). In the instructions it says (larger than 64MB required) all my cards meet this, even the small 70MB card I have and yes i have been using P2 Status Logger.. although unless im missing something all it does is log the hours of operation and the strangest thing, when i hit download on the new firmware it pulls up the HPX2100's firmware. i feel like panasonic doesnt support the logger app and it has glitches now.
 
Also i should note all the SD cards format correctly in the camera and allow read/write of camera data like scene files and such.. i dont understand why this one objective is giving me a hard time
 
I figured it out and its a stupid reason. I unziped the panasonic file from a windows folder and prepared the cards that way and the varicam let me update.
 
Good one. Glad it's all sorted. So often it comes down user error. Done it many times myself in the past.

Chris Young
 
It's just strange. My macbook pro is running snow leopard and my mac pro is running Yosemite and yet my fiance's work laptop running the current version of windows allowed it to work. The SD cards were formatted in the varicam and all i was doing was copying and pasting a file on a computer.. just strange that the varicam is that picky
 
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