Panasonic DMR-ES10 Overheating?

[Superflysi]

We run 23 ES10's across our three bungy sites, and record several jumps onto unfinalized DVD's then on their final jump we finalize so that they can take the disk home. The units we record on, are not used to finalize, we have a bank of 4 at each site for playback, and finalizing. The problems we are getting are:

Not able to finalize, ejecting the dvd, and popping it back in several times until the unit allows you to finalize seems to work most of the time. On other occasions finalizing is impossible and we must use another ES10 to dub the unfinalized disk to another, then finalize that disk.

By using fans we have reduced the instances of errors considerably, but they still exist, esspecially at our Nevis site which runs on generator power. To combat this problem we have a hard drive recorder running in tandem, and dub off from it when the original doesn't work.

My real question to the forum is how many other people are experiencing difficulty finalizing from recordings that originated from a different ES10 to the finalizing unit.

[guns1inger]

I can't comment from experience on these units, but I would say two things;

1. In the past the recommendation has usually been to finalise on the machine that did the recording. This held for PC units, so it would not surprise me to find it holds for standalones as well, although times do change.

2. I would have concerns at a generators ability to supply the sort of clean, constant power that these units would require for smooth operations. Given the very small tolerences involved in burning DVDs, any small variation can kill a burn.

[trhouse]

You certainly have a unique and interesting application.

I have a friend who uses an ES10 as a security system recorder after a time lapse VCR failed. The ES10 runs 24/7 and records to dvd-rw, but no heat related issues have appeared. The dvd-rw's are only finalized if they are to be copied in a computer so finalizing does not occur that often.

Not having seen your setup, I wonder if the vent holes on the sides or back of the ES10 are being blocked. The unit has no fan so it is important to keep the vents unblocked for adequate convection cooling.

I tend to agree about generator power not being all that clean. You might consider a product such as this,

http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=21

between the generator and several ES10's for power conditioning.

[Superflysi]

Will look into the conditioning the power supply for sure. The other aspect which was interesting was that we actually put a promo onto every disk prior to recording the jumps, this is done on a bank of DMR-EH50 units witht the promo already on their hard drives, we found we had quite a number of failed disks buring from hard drive, and have now switched to buring them from a live source. (We need to do this so that the promo is on the disk and it's still unfinalized so that jumps can be put on). We are currently using non Panasonic stock, so it will be interesting to see if we still see the artifact comming through when we start using the new stock.

[lordsmurf]

And your blank media brand is.... ?