I just filmed an imporant meeting for a local business this morning (paying gig). On a new GL2 (less than 30 tapes through its heads) with a brand new Sony Premium tape (the only brand and type the camera has seen) everything looked great going into the viewfinder.

Unfortunately, when I logged it into my computer this afternoon, it plays back as PURE (start to end) mosiac--no sound either. Same behavior on my MiniDV deck, and two other GL2's. I tried a new tape in the camera to see if its the heads or the tape, and a new tape works just fine. Then I tried the damaged tape in the camera again (fastforwarded past the last recorded position on the tape) for a test shot--plays back fine.

Thankfully I brought along a second camera and used it, too bad it is an extremely wide shot for a 45 min meeting and does not have the benifit of the wireless mics I had hooked up. But its going to save my butt right now!

Anyone have any suggestions for pulling anything off of the tape? Even if I could get audio (now it's pure silience) I would be thankful at this point.

Thanks in advance,
Patrick

I've broke down and purchased a sub-$1000 lap top and installed Pinnacle 9 on it ($49). Simply, I ingest to DV-AVI on the fly to the 80GIG hard drive via firewire. My events typically generate $750-$5000 and I can't afford a boo-boo. Of course this works well for fix, tripod mounted camera situations or when we use our trailer (4 GL2s on snakes). You don't have to edit on the laptop. Pinnacle allows you to simply play-out the captured (ingested) DV-AVI right out of the firewire port. I'll also wireless dump the file to the main NLE overnight. For 'live-to-tape' we use WIN-TV and record as 720x480 DVD quality MPEGs. Sooner or later everyone gets bit by dirty heads or bad tapes.

I think your going in the right direction with the laptop, which is what I will do to avoid future mishaps. But again, it really only works well for 1 camera on a tripod at a time. We cover many weddings where this isnt really an option, although I always believe in saftey through reduncy, which is why I always use 4 cameras for a wedding. Im looking into Direct to Disk recording and outfiting our cameras with drives which may be the best solution for DV. Plus I like the idea of ending "wasted" capturing hours (this gets ugly when you do a four camera shoot) and being more productive.

Also keep in mind that there are direct-to-disk recorders which
you just attach to the camera. Much easier than a laptop if you
need to be mobile and such. Ofcourse if you simply record
something static it can be fine to use a computer/laptop.

If you are going to use a computer check out the DV Rack software,
seems to be a nice program especially designed to use a computer
as a direct-to-disk device.