repairing/restoring a Mini DV tape

Question

repairing/restoring a Mini DV tape

I filmed the Florida 3A state championship soccer game yesterday. My camera filming from the press box (Canon GL1) had a brand new Mini DV tape put in for the second half. I just went to capture the footage this morning and noticed the right side of the tape has artifacts. I hope this is the right term for my problem. It looks like big blocks of pixelation. It also puts what was filmed on top on the bottom like a split screen. Very Strange. I tried playing back in my other camera (Canon GL2) and the main image is fine but I still have the artifacts on the right hand side. I cleaned the heads on both cameras to no avail. My wife said it did not record with the artifacts on the right. Obviously, I am really sweating bullets right now because my rep could take a hit with this one, being that the venue was pretty high profile. Any suggestions are welcome.

G5, Mac OS X (10.4.4), 2x 160GB HDs, 250GB ext. 2.75GB RAM 1.8Ghz sp

Posted on Feb 9, 2006 12:19 PM

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Answer 1

VJK

Level 5

4,260 points

Feb 9, 2006 12:48 PM in response to Martin Reinhardt

How do you know that it did not record the artifacts? Just cuz you did not see them in the viewfinder does not mean they are not there

I don't touch Canon cameras (making devil horns here) but could the tape have been recorded on some other setting? Does Canon have that option?

Have you tried playing the tape on something other than a Canon?

Did you clean the cam heads before you started recording? Do a quick test record on a new tape and see what happens; that may help eliminate the cam from the troubleshooting chain.

I take it you are seeing this prob when playing directily out of the cam and when played from within FC ... what does it look like during capture?

If this is a tape prob .. well, sorry about that. In my experience, physical probs on the tape itself are beyond repair. Mind you, I have seen some very funky things on a tape that disappear when played on another machine, etc

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Answer 2

Feb 9, 2006 1:31 PM in response to Martin Reinhardt

Find a DV deck to play the tape on to confirm that the tape definitely has artifacts. It sounds like a head alignment problem in your camera. If it was the record head out of alignment, you're stuck with the artifacts. If it's your playback head, the tape should look OK in another deck.

If you confirm that the artifacts are on the tape, and they're limited to a small area on the right side, you may try growing the image up marginally and adjusting the frame so that your artifacts are off-screen. However, I wouldn't grow it more than about 110% as the image just degrades too much above that. Good luck!

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Answer 3

Feb 9, 2006 2:00 PM in response to Martin Reinhardt

If you are capturing from a different deck, you might also want to try capturing from the camera you originally recorded the tape on. If the heads or the tape path are only slightly out, it might be good enough to get the video captured.

Dual 2G G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

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Answer 4

Feb 9, 2006 2:09 PM in response to Martin Reinhardt

My wife said it did not record with the artifacts on the right<<</div>

Like VJK said, there's no way of her knowing this unless she played the tape back after recording. If she's saying that she didn't see the artifacts during recording, she's probably right ... what you see in the viewfinder or though a monitor output during the recording is the same signal that goes to the record section of the camera. - you do not see the actual signal that was recorded to tape until you playback later.

-DH

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Answer 5

Feb 9, 2006 3:33 PM in response to Martin Reinhardt

We have a Sony camera with a DSR1 (DVCam) back on it. Tapes from this camera have always played perfectly on our DSR45 deck but not on our DSR1500. This is despite repeated attempts to realign the heads in both the camera back and the deck.

The moral of the story, try every deck you can. You might get lucky.

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Answer 6

Feb 20, 2006 6:41 AM in response to Martin Reinhardt

Thanks everyone for the feedback and advice. I guess I need to make sure the record heads are aligned. Also, I think I was incorrectly calling them artifacts instead of dropped frames or dropout.

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