Panasonic X900M Serious Design Fault?

Equally importantly, does the advertising state in any way that the camera CAN record continuously without losing frames?

Hi Alan

One would be forgiven for assuming the fundamental purpose of a camcorder is to record events accurately continuous or not.  Just as a side note I also have a much cheaper JVC HM300EK £200 compared to the X900M £700 and it works faultlessly, more files because they break at 2gig but no missing frames.

C

What you may need to have is discipline when shooting, int old days when we used tape you had to change tapes and keep an eye out when they were coming to an end, nothing has changed with tapeless and you need to have the same discipline to get around the limitations of the media.

 

To be honnest it's a prosumer camera so expecting it to work like a pro camera and throw out any shooting disciplines is quite frankly asking rather a lot, but the 4gb limitation is not down to the camera but the operating system of PC's etc, I am on mac so tend not to have such problems.

 

My cameras never drop any frames but they are pro P2 cameras but I still like to keep an eye on my media capacity and organise my shooting to suit my requirements.

 

One easy method with these smaller prosumer cameras is to use 4gb cards, that way you have several reels of footage and are not putting all your eggs in one basket with the risk of losing frames or footage, a 4gb card gives plenty of recording space and also allows you to deal with shooting in a more disciplined manner.  

 

That said though I have used my canon HF11 as a b-camera recording continuous for over one hour and never had any problems so maybe it is your editing software that is not stitching the footage together properly? I am using FCP 7 and it all seems to work OK with no dropped frames over long periods.

 

 

Hi Gary

 

Sorry to disagree with you in a nice way but, the problem occurs with the camcorders 32gig memory and I used 32gig SDHC class 10 cards.  I also have a much much cheaper camcorder as backup its the JVC HM300EK at just under £200, it breaks the files up into 2 gig chunks but there are never any missing frames.  It was natural then to assume the dearer `Expert` camcorder would at least handle this!  All the best C

OK and I appreciate that and as said my canon HF11 has 32gb internal memory and seems to be OK.

 

There are no reports of this fault other than your comment on the B&H web site so maybe it is your editing software that is not putting the footage together when you import it as this is what happens on FCP7.

 

What edit software are you using and it may be that it needs to have an update to deal with this camera., the sony Z7 sometimes had this fault into FCP but a software plug in update for FCP seemed to cure this.

Hi Gary,

 

Panasonic supply a rudimentary editor, does it in that, I have used MS Movie maker, does it in that, I have used Premiere CS6, does it in that, it is definately a fault of the camcorder. 

I have the Panasonic HDC-HS300 and only use it locked off and as a backup.  It also has small gaps between each clip limit (about 5 frames).  So far it has not troubled me as it is used to provide cut-a-ways for the main footage. It does mean that I have got to sync the separated clips individually to the main footage.

 

Harry

Oh well I am on mac with FCP and have a canon HF11 with 32gb and it all works ok, is the footage glitching in the camera on playback or is it only when you have loaded it into the edit system, if it is OK on the camera then it is your PC op system that is not stitching it together correctly, if it glitches in the camera then it is the camera that is at fault.  

Hi Harry

 

I use a JVC HM300EK (cheapo) as a backup for similar purposes and there are never any missing frames between file breaks.  I think Panasonic have it badly wrong, cheers though for the info. C

Gary, as daft as this sounds I had not played it back on the camera to test before rather relying on a file being a file, crc and all that but have just played it back through the mini HDMI and oh what a gap, seems worse from the camera direct that in the editor, my diagnosis:- Design fault

Do you know if they have updated the firmware for the camera as that can sometimes have bug fixes for this sort of thing, panasonic should be aware of that though so it may be worth going back to the place that you bought the camera.

I must admit Gary your suggestion bought out the cynic in me. I have never come across firmware upgrades for camcorders don't they just bring out a `new model`

I believe that missing audio frames (on the TM900) has been discussed in the 'Panasonic TM 900 club'  thread (posting #63 is one example).

Thanks Tony, mmm very interesting looks like Panasonic never learn or listen to their customers some of which are now `ex customers` - cheers

After a little experimentation, I seem to have found a system that does solve this problem.... at least, it does with my setup....

 

Using a 1hr 20min recording (made with an SD900, 50p mode at best quality), I tried several ways of editing the 4gig break joins.

 

By transferring the files to the PC using the "HD Writer AE 3.0" software (as supplied by Panasonic) and then doing the edit using "HD Writer AE 3.0" as well, the joins seem to be good.

 

I didn't like the operational aspects of this software, and I certainly wouldn't want to do a complex edit using it, but it was relatively simple to make a short "patch" that bridged the 4gig join apparently seamlessly. ( I say apparently because the long test recording I made didn't have highly critical sound and vision elements... just trees waving in the breeze and a city skyline ambience for audio.... but the visual joins did not show as far as I could see, and there was continuous audio).

 

If I'm going to be REALLY picky, the "HD Writer AE 3.0" patch had a slight audio phasing problem if mixed with the original audio in Edius, but a hard audio cut to and from the patch was not discernable on my test material.

 

Obviously, my recording was on an SDHC card and I transferred from that, and I think "CM004d8137" might be using his camera's internal memory, but I believe the file structure is similar on both recording media.

 

From an operational point of view, editing in Edius and patching duff joins using the "HD Writer AE 3.0" output seemed OK ....  obviously a little convoluted but probably workable if there aren't too many of them.

 

Probably worth a try.

 

Hope this helps.

 

dave

So if Dave has been able to do this it means that the camera has the footage data and it is therefore a software problem that is not stitching the chunks together correctly, this actually could be down to a third party operating system bug as it seems to affect several different software packages.

 

I think the 4gb limitation is part of the fat32 formatting system and as said it seems to work OK with my canon HF11 and my mac based FCP system.

 

As I said before some users of the Z7 had this problem as well but personally I always found it OK on my mac systems so it may be that a further investigation of what is going on will be able to solve the problem. 

Hi Dave, thanks for your efforts and time on this.  I had used the software that came with the camera (updated) as I mentioned in and earlier post to no avail but first thing this morning after your post I used the HD Writer software to download my daughter's concert recorded on 29-Sep.  During a solo by one of the performers the sound is lost for a split second and there is a minute flicker in video.  Maybe in a `busy` scene this would not be evident so much.  When interrogating the footage in an audio editor you can clearly see a `flat lining` of the audio between the files.  Annoyingly it is consistent as I now have 3 sets of recordings of charity shows and concerts only one of them during a major dance scene is the problem `hardly` noticeable but the other 2 are major hicups.  I have used several linear editing programs and even given the footage to a professional friend to investigate unfortunately with the same results - missing frames both from the original camcorder and the newly supplied one from Panasonic.  Panasonic are also cagey about the issue saying things like "thank you for your feedback which we have passed to our development and marketing team for future reference" what does this mean I wonder, maybe a X910M!.

I had this same problem initially after getting the SD900. I usually record concerts which last anything up to an hour each half.

 

If you just copy the files across manually from the camera or SD card then whichever software you use for editing is unable to join the 4gb files seemlessly which really annoyed me, but if you use your software to import the files in the correct way for AVCHD they do join seemlessly without any glitch or missed frames. I use Sony Vegas editing software and manually importing into this creates a glitch at the file limit but if I do it the proper way for importing AVCHD files (according to the software manual) ie. through device explorer then it joins all the 4gb files into a much larger hour long file automatically without any joins or audio glitch, missed frames. You have to do it this import way directly from the camera or card into you editing software.

 

I realise different editing software will deal with this in a different way so you will need to fing out the correct way in whichever software you are using and also that your software does have the facility to actually do this.

 

Hope this is of some help.

Hi Paul, many thanks for your time and help here, I thought I had done as per the manual for the software still with the gap but I will re-visit this tonight to see if there are more options available in the HD Writer software as I have only ever seen seperate chunks of AVCHD just the same as if you hadf copied them directly from the camcorder, I have never seen the software `join` the clips as you describe.  It will be the first thing I do after my tea tonight! thank you.

That seems to make sense as all these systems need to have all the file structure to do things properly, this goes for my P2 system too as it has data regarding the last clips and if they have spanned the 4gb directory structure limitation.

 

In my case for P2 and the canon HF11 AVCHD camera I always import via log and transfer in FCP and no doubt it looks at the data and then knows where to stitch the clips together into a single clip.

 

It all sounds nice, but wouldn't you have thought if it was the case after umpteen letters, emails and calls to Panasonic Tech that one of them would have mentioned it? rather than acting evasive. I will look for more options in the software as I have not yet seen a clip stiched as Paul mentioned above in the HD Writer software or the linear sw used. I will have a closer look tonight and feedback.

Totally agree re the customer service but sadly a lot of manufacturers employ peole who are just there to fob people off, I had an issue with the FCP plug in for the Z7 when I had it and even though I had Sony silver service they were totally disinterested that it didn't work and just blamed apple who then in turn blamed sony.

 

I ended up using clipwrap but when it came to buying a new camera system I chose the P2 panasonic platform over sonys and have not had any issues in the past three years.   

Up until this issue I have always been happy with the Panasonic `build` but now I have experienced their sheer disregard for their `bread and butter`, us the customer I have totally switched off from them, I was even going to buy a Panasonic TV but now looking at (funnily enough) the Sony equivalents!

 

 

Been down that road. All the big companies do what they have to do to make money. I would be very surprised if there were any real difference between Panasonic and Sony policies. If one company was consistently better then they would soon drive the others out of business. Everything seems to rest on that first email or phone call. If you get the right person  everything runs smooth.

 

As for TVs I would say Panasonic for Plasma and Sony for LCD.

 

On the original subject when doing a school play I turned off and back on everytime there was a break or scenechange.

I only installed HD writer to look at this problem last night... so I used all their default settings and OKed permission to do some sort of indexing or registration of files/folders etc..  The software transfers footage more as a file 'structure" I think.....  Peek in the folders and you will see, amongst other files,  the usual less than 4gig video... But if you look for the footage in HD Writer, what it 'shows" you is apparently one big file....  supposedly 14.4gig and 1hr 20mins long in my test.... with the joins ironed out. I then used the somewhat clunky and simplistic editor in HD Writer to delete the first 22 mins and the last 57mins, leaving me with a one minute patch which I exported as a file to use in Edius. (..the editing in HD Writer will take a while to get your head round... Not intuitive... Strange terminology... Very step by step.... but there is a "beginners guide" style set of instructions...) The other joins at 44mins and 66mins could also be patched over in the same way.

 

I assume you could just extract the whole duration of the shot you require... but HD Writer seems rather slow to render, so I opted for the short patch from a known timecode system. There seemed to be negligable quality loss, if any, so the patch just edited in on Edius fine.

 

Good luck with it.

 

dave

Dave, many thanks, I can't wait to get home now and give it a go, hope it works, then I'll be able to instruct Panasonic Tech on the fix !

I really do not like the Panasonic HD Writer software, probably because I am not used to it and mainly use Sony Vegas.

 

On reading about importing in Adobe Premiere from AVCHD camcorder you must use the Media Browser to pull the files in from SD card or camcorder and only select the first clip of any spanned files and this will then join the clips seemlessly into bigger files without any break. I have not tried this personally in Premiere CS5/6 but that is what the help file says. It certainly works this way in Sony Vegas. I think I would give the HD Writer software a miss if at all possible!

I've quickly read through this item and saw no mention of a tiny program called 'MTS Merger' has anyone tried this with the X900m files yet?, because I have a friend whose Panasonic AVCHD files work well with this,

John

The very first thing you need to know is that with most proper card based digital video formats (and HDDs) you need to let your editing software see the entire folder structure of the card. That means if you copy an SDHC card to your computer you MUST copy everything - all the folders. If you cherry pick the video files your editing software will NOT make sense of the files.

 

Here's how Adobe Premiere handles cards - I'm sure other NLEs have similar functions.

 

If you import using the "Media Browser" in Adobe Premiere it seemlessly joins spanned clips.

 

In fact you don't see the individual files - you just see a list of shots.

 

e.g. If you had six files which were one shot 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004, 0005, 0006 the Media Browser would only show you 0001 with the total duration equalling files 0001 to 0006.

 

The next "shot" in the list would be 0007.

 

If you do not use the media browser and import the individual files the metadata required to re-assemble files into clips the will be incomplete - typically this results in a bunch of video/audio clips that just don't line up correctly.

 

Hope this helps.

Cheers for the info Gavin, having now exhausted options using media browser, `clip stitch` programs and different NLE's I think Rogs may have touched on the real problem being the Panasonic Codec having problems with some NLE's (I never got to test Vegas so maybe this is one that would work although my favoured one is absolutely fine with my backup JVC).  From other posts and forums the Panasonic problem is widespread.  I just wished I had invested in a better JVC model as I mentioned previouosly my cheap HM300EK at around £200 does the job faithfully everytime without losing frames and apart from slightly inferior audio the clip quality is almost indistinguishable.  I am annoyed at the big corporations like Panasonic who treat customers badly or just ignore issues but then again I have learned a valuable lesson from all of you guys out their in forums like this where `real` experiences are far better than any advertising e.g. "Panasonic X900m The Expert's choice" we know different.

Gavin, Edius does much the same. The browser imports the entire structure and away you go.

Hasn't every modern NLE got the ability to import and edit AVCHD? (FCP 7 probably needs a plugin, everything else i've used in the past coupld of years has done it out for the box). 

 

The trick is understanding that the AVCHD file/folder structure is needed and that you have to import the footage into the app rather than just copying the .mts files. 

 

Reading the manual is a good starting point, all the NLEs i've used have had quite good manuals that explain this kind of task. 

I don't know about all NLEs, I know about Edius.

What's a rhetorical question?

 

:)