One of our producers called me from Poland, he had shot a bunch of footage with the HD250 and could not see anything when playing back on the LCD. He was understandably concerned he had no image on tape. I checked another camera here and it's pretty straight forward, hit the VTR button behind the VF and play.

I couldn't think of any other buttons to suggest. He said when he hit play, the HDV/DV Light on the camera would switch to "DV" and he would see TC moving and only a blue screen. He shot in 720p30 HDV mode.

He tried head cleaning with no change.

Any ideas what we can try?

Dave Beaty

have him check if the camera is in the right mode - make sure its set to 30p HDV (in record mode) if the material was shot in that mode. I´m not sure if the camera automatically switches, I think you´d have to reboot it by switching the settings manually.

do other tapes work? have him set everything to 30p HDV, record a few seconds on a fresh tape and then play back right away.

There are playback options in the menu that may not be set correctly (i.e. force DV instead of autodetect).

Make sure PB TAPE is set to AUTO. You can find it on the 2nd page of VIDEO FORMAT.

John came back from Poland today and luckily the footage on tape is fine.

I checked out the camera and loaded my standard scene file. The VTR played back perfectly with some HDV tapes from previous shoots. I haven't tried the tapes from Poland but I am assuming operator error and somehow one of those menus you mentioned had the wrong setting.

Phew!

Dave