[MacDV] Re: DV Playback issues--MacDV Digest, Vol 3, Issue 9

[Ted Langdell]

Ted Langdell
Ted Langdell Creative Broadcast Services
Marysville, CA
Main:  	(530) 741-1212

Sounds like it could be a slightly different tape path alignment from 
machine to machine or possibly heads wearing out or getting clogged.

Error correction can compensate for some differences, but beyond a 
certain margin you'll begin to see breakup in the picture, or have data 
errors in transfer.

At the worst, you'll not be able to recover the data from the tape 
easily.  At best, having a deck or camcorder you can afford to "take 
out of alignment" might enable recovery.  Not for the faint-hearted, 
those without shaky hands or without the right tools.

Care is needed to keep any tools from slipping and damaging a spinning 
head drum.

Having a friendly engineer or tech with the right stuff can come in 
handy.

It sounds like you're in a corporate video department.  If the people 
you get tapes from work for your company, perhaps aligning ALL cameras 
in the company to the same reference standard would help avoid the 
problem.

If not, send your contributors a tape that's been recorded on a deck 
that HAS been aligned to proper DV or your main format's standard and 
require that their cameras match, and that they then send you a tape 
that's been recorded post-alignment.

Ted.


On Nov 3, 2004, at 6:02 PM, 
macdv-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com wrote:

> Message: 8
> Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 20:45:07 -0500
> From: James Asherman <jimash at optonline.net>
> Subject: Re: [MacDV] Extreme
> To: "A place to discuss digital video on Macintosh."
> 	<macdv at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
> Message-ID: <284715CA-2E03-11D9-9C7A-0003933EDC98 at optonline.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
>
> On Wednesday, November 3, 2004, at 08:13  PM, Ted Langdell wrote:
>
>> ANYTHING Mac or DV related into their posts.
>
> Why is it that some tapes ( I get tapes from several camera people)
> play on one machine and not another. I mean play without constant
> glitching?
>   My stuff works right. Many tapes are made right and capture easily .
>   But some, especially the DVCam ones, seem to play ok but the capture
> stops with a message that FCP has detected "a problem with the data".
>   These tapes often only play 3 -4 seconds at a time and some clear up
> after about two minutes.
>   It isn't my prefs. With a decent tape my stuff can stop save and
> proceed past a TC glitch by itself.
> I often capture  a full hour and cut it up later. No problemo.
>   I thought it was  my capture control TC settings but they are ok. If 
> I
> see real timecode I switch to it.
> I though it was my older player but the tapes often (not always) also
> do this trick in my newer player. Could it be that the cameras 
> overheat?
> Sometimes I even get some that the "home office" couldn't play and
> those go just fine. It is frustrating trying to find just the angle of
> this problem.
> Sometimes I think my little player overheats running at 130%.
> Sometimes I think these guys bury their cameras between jobs.
> Jim
>