I've been shooting on DV for my dissertation project, all day, and when i checked the tapes, to my dispair, there is a massive problem with the image.

It is split into 12 horizontal bars. 6 of the bars have the footage, just as it should be, however the other 6 bars have somehow held a frozen image from the previous take.

We are shooting on a SONY DSR 300, with brand new Sony tapes.

This isnt the only thing that has been strange. at one point the warning light to the left of the display panel was flashing (and causing a beep in the headphones) we tried to find out what this meant but it stopped so we carried on shooting.

Also between each take the time code is broken and there is at least 2-3 seconds, sometimes 10-30 seconds of blue screen with no time code. It looks to me like the tape has been rewound and fastforwarded after every single take leaving a buffer so as not to write over the previous footage. however our camera op insists that nothing of the sort happened, that the error is an internal one with the camera.

Any ideas what might cause this.

I found a thread on similar problem elsewhere where an old tape showed through in 6 frozen bars to the new footage, but it was assumed this was because it was an old tape and that a head cleaner will do the job. ill give this a go, but we are supposed to be filming again in 20 minutes and i'm still very little the wiser. the manual has no explanation for the warning light (not that is any help anyway, and the equipment is loaned from university and therell be no chance to see a technician till monday) we are also due to film for a full day tomorrow.

Any advice will be accepted with much gratitude.

Alex

sounds like you need to either run cleaning tape or have the camera serviced.

Is the time code missing even when played on the camera or only if you play the tapes on a deck ?

if you where playing the tapes from a deck and had these problem try playing them on the camera that recorded them and seee if the problem goes away

I'd try a head cleaning tape. Run it for 10 seconds. Then run a field tape on playback; if the cleaning tape gets the junk off the heads, you should get a normal picture in the viewfinder on playback.

I ran a head cleaner, seemed to clear it up for a bit, then it came back, we ran it again, after the third time the problem hasnt recurred... yet.

Ive just returned the equipment and the technician reckons we've cleaned it up, so hopefully the next user wont have the same problem.

Cheers,

Alex