I filmed a lot of stuff with my xl-1s, with the panasonic ay-dvm63mq tapes. when i try to play them in a sony dsr-45 deck it skips and fragments. I then pull it out and it plays fine in the camera. i tried clean the deck and that doen't help. i put other tapes filmed with other canon xl-1s in it and it plays fine

any answers would be appreciated

torrey
1-225-315-6677

I experience a similar issue with tapes recorded on my XL1s and rying to play them back on my GL1. The audio has a tendency to break up. I believe my XL1s needs a transport system and tape head alignment.

Torrey,

This is just a thought, but something to consider.

You might want to make a dub of the tapes in question before sending the camera off. Use the XL1s (the camera they were shot with) to play them and firewire to your deck or another camera for the dub.

Once the original camera is realigned, it may not be able to play the original tapes since they are tracked to that camera's alignment at the time of recording.

I hope this makes some sense.

Good luck!

Man is that a good suggestion!

Correct, you need to dub everything you shot or it will be lost forever. This is a VERY common issue among ALL DV cameras. Most people never notice because they are shooting/playing back from the same camera. If you get your camera repaired these tapes will be lost. I had this happen in the middle of a documentary to about 40 tapes. I just dubbed them off before I had the camera repaired... no probs...



ash =o)

Is it possible to dub to hard disk/DVD without loss of quality and then eventually put it back to tape? I'm asking this because as long as tapes and heads are involved, you would need to back up to the infinity (how can you tell that the camcorder you're using for backups has aligned heads)?

[QUOTE=Torrey C. Harris]Is it possible to dub to hard disk/DVD without loss of quality and then eventually put it back to tape? I'm asking this because as long as tapes and heads are involved, you would need to back up to the infinity (how can you tell that the camcorder you're using for backups has aligned heads)?

Torrey,

If it won't play in the DSR-45, you should probably dub them from the XL1-s. It's the only way to be sure that you will be able to save that video once the camera has been repaired.

To my knowledge, you will suffer some loss if you dub to DVD, you are adding additional compression. There will also be extra hoops to jump through if you want to move that video into your editing program.

I don't think that you will lose much quality if you firewire to harddrive, as long as you are capturing in native format. You can then output to DVD as a data file, and that should be an exact copy with no additional loss...digital zeros and ones. Later you can import it back into your hard drive, then to your editing program for post production.

I am certainly not an expert, and invite anyone to point out any flaws in my suggestions.

Brad