HPX250: Sensor Problem with new HPX-250?

R

ranger9913

New member
I purchased 4 of these about a month ago and I have lightly tested them. Yesterday I used one for about an hour. Everything looked fine on the screen and in the viewfinder. When I went to play the footage I saw a flaw in every video clip.

The camera was set to Auto and 1/60th shutter speed because I was under stadium lighting. I also turned the shutter off and it made no difference. Most of it was shot in 720/60p but I also switched to 1080i and still had the same artifacts in the video.
 
I have never seen anything like that in all my many, many hours of shooting on the three P2 cameras I have owned including my HPX250. I would duplicate the problem and try to see if you can isolate it to a single P2 card/camera. Since you have four cams, you could send the malfunctioning camera and card in for testing and repair by Panasonic and still be able to shoot with the other three rigs.
 
This is an extreme case of digital dropouts. I had similar issues w/ the HPX3100, 3700 where there are small digital dropouts just like your clip, but only at the bottom and 1 time. Never 2 or more in a row. The problem was that during the P2 offload, there was never MD5 checksum verification. Everything was relied on the P2CMS for Windows download. So I never know if it was the offload that causing it. I was driving in a bumpy, heavy shock environment while offloading P2. This was via the flimsy AJ-PCD2 single USB reader. Perhaps physical shock and vibration from the USB contacts caused that error. From that point onward, all P2 offloads were with MD5 checksum (Shot Put Pro Mac or PC) or I use the HPX250's own USB copy via the S-partition w/ full verification. No errors spotted ever since for the past 8 months. Has been 100% accurate and I can shoot with full confidence.
 
I figured it out today and it was indeed the P2 card. The card was brand new when I used it yesterday so I didn't really think anything of it. Every camera I put "that" card in had the same issue so I'm sending it back to B&H.
 
Glad you found out the cause. Panasonic should give you another card with a full refund, or at least a partial since they have always priced these cards for ultimate reliability. Harsh but in this instance the P2 card was no better than a $10 SD card.
 
The new type F series P2 cards claimes to perform error correction like RAID hd. Costs about $100 more over E-series. But there's no AVC Ultra cams out on the market yet. Why would I want to buy it when next year or so it may drop. Kind of foolish for summer 2012. But the F series p2 card may be the answer for super important event. Not sure if any of the current P2 cams can take advantage of the error correction feature found on the new F series P2 cards.

The bad memory block on P2 media is indeed quite alarming as nothing is 100% error free.
 
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