Canon XH-A1s Problem

[Bill Vincent]

Just wanted to post this to see if anyone else has experienced problems such as this - I just used my new Canon A1s last night for the first time. Upon checking footage this morning from a 38 min. program recorded, there is a break in timecode and picture on the tape for approx. 1.5 seconds about 19 minutes into the tape. The tape I used was the one that came with the Canon camera, the Canon DigitalMaster HDV tape.

I'm kinda freaked out by this - brand new camera, brand new "master quality" tape, and I get a dropout? I'm going to do some testing myself running more footage today, but I wanted to see if anyone else had bad OOTB experiences with the A1s like this?

Thanks...

[Khoi Pham]

You are going to get drop out like that a lot during the first probably 50 hrs. of use, until the camera has form a good groove with the tape that you are using then drop out will be minimal, but whatever you do, stick with the same tape so that the head drum will form with that kind of tape.

[Susanto Widjaja]

i recommend sony tapes based on articles that i read before.

[Bill Vincent]

Thanks, I appreciate the advice. I ran another tape today (Sony) for 60 min. and was able to digitize that with no dropouts at all- so I'm thinking either it was a bad Canon tape or just a new camera thing as you mentioned.

Normally 1.5 seconds isn't going to be devastating - but of course Murphy's Law would be working overtime at a wedding and that 1.5 seconds would be when the bride said "I do"... of course.

;)

Bill

[Aaron J. Yates]

I've been using the A1s for about two years, and I still have dropouts. Normally they only happen once in a day's worth of shooting, but as you said, Murphy's Law is a booger. Luckily we always shoot with two cameras, but this can still cause severe heartburn.

I use the same tapes for everything, not master quality but still not the bottom of the barrel. I don't know exactly what causes them.

One thing I've found, sometimes it's not the tape. A few times I've recaptured the tape and the dropout went away. Try that if you run into Murphy's Law.

[Todd Clark]

Make sure you guys "exercise" the tapes before you use them. You shouldn’t have any more dropouts.

[Bill Busby]

Originally Posted by Aaron J. Yates

One thing I've found, sometimes it's not the tape. A few times I've recaptured the tape and the dropout went away. Try that if you run into Murphy's Law.

I've always said that I think there's something funky going on at times with the tape transports of these camera's. For a a few years now it's been my standard workflow when Avid stops capturing because of what I call a "ghost dropout", I elect to save what was captured, load that last clip in a source monitor, go to the end frame, note the TC number, then start capturing again 10 secs or so before that point and maybe 90% of the time it's NOT a dropout at all, just something fudgy using a camera as a source. So I know I may need to match frame that clip, I append the file name with a "B" for instance, letting me know it needs to be match framed with the preceding clip.

[Khoi Pham]

Could be just dust on the head, or tape, transport, that is why he suggested to "exercise" the tape.