Panasonic Dropout Tapes - Pany wants them

[Tobin Strickland]

IF you have had a panasonic nightmare tape with uber bad drop outs. Send them to me. I called pany to complain and they said they want them to research the problem. Let's help pany help themselves. Besides, just griping about it doesn't do any good.

Send them to me and I'll send them to the pany person I talked to who said they wants them.

Tobin Strickland
11803 Knollpark Dr.
Austin, Texas 78758


Uh yeah, .....I switched to Sony for the time being. But maybe we can help pany figure out why it works in some cams and not others.

Mail away....

[Greg Laves]

I had one Panasonic tape that would not play the last 3 minutes of the tape. Just horizontal banding. Unfortunately, I do not have the tape since I had to ship it to the client. So far, that is the only problem I have experienced.

[Bill Pryor]

I know of 6 or 8 tapes with huge dropouts, but the producer would never send them in because they all contain valuable original footage, even though much of it is unusable.

[John Estcourt]

I would suspect bad quality control as from reading the forums it appears to be bad batches.
Sorry cant send in tapes because the footage is too valuable(even with drop outs).
Ive switched to sony tapes even the cheap premium have had zero dropouts after 30 tapes.
I now use the sony master quality hdv tapes .unfortunately ive still got loads of pannies left, just wont sell them or use them and i will never go back to the pannies nor recommend them...

[Bill Pryor]

I agree that it seems like a quality control problem. I had no dropouts at all for quite a number of AMQ tapes. Then on a shoot with two identical cameras, one box of 10 tapes had about 6 or more tapes with serious dropouts. We're fairly certain they all came from one box, and another box of 10 had no problems at all. But then later, one of my personal tapes from another case of 10 had big dropouts. I also switched to Sony's PHDVM digital mastering tapes and have had not a single dropout. Too bad, because the Panasonic tapes were less than half the price of the Sonys. I guess you get what you pay for.

[Mike Barber]

I have been a steady user of Panasonic tapes ever since I bought my first camera. In fact, as far as my own work goes, I have used Panasonic tapes exclusively and very very rarely had any issue at all, until the last two boxes of AY-DVM83PQ tapes (which I bought last year whilst still living in Philadelphia). I shot a long form instructional video and had a nightmare with the footage. Luckily I covered my butt with lots of coverage and with clever editing I was able to make a fine product, but it did cause delays in finishing the job (not a good thing).

Now, I have about a dozen of tapes I could send, but I won't. There would certainly be an issue with the owner of the intellectual property on those tapes, so I'm afraid I can't help.

EDIT: FYI, the batch number is 90D6CMBBR for the DVM83 tapes, and 2226CLZ3R for DVM63 tapes.

[D.J. Ammons]

I am in the same boat. Bought 2 Sony V1U's and have run about 20 Panny AY-DVM63PQ's through them because of the high recommendation for this tape on forums.

I have experienced drop out with these tapes in both cameras and from different batches of tape. Other than a couple of tapes at the beginning these are the only tapes I have run through these cams and I used a Panny head cleaning tape when I made the switch.

I have just about decided to switch to Sony and use the premiums for less than critical projects then the better Sony tapes I saw Douglas Spotted Eagle recommend on some thread (I will have to find it) recently for critical ones.

I have had at least a half dozen of the Panny tapes with multiple dropouts.

[Rick Lutec]

it seems that most that have posted issues with Panny tapes are using the HDV format.
Not sure if my partner and I have just been lucky or if it's because we use the tapes with SD cams.
I must have gone through 100s of PQ 63min tapes and can't think of more than once or twice that I ever saw a dropout. For us the Pannies are cheaper and the cases have more of a pro look to them.
Pending on the budget of the job I occasionally used the higher quality AMQ that ran 83min and my PD 170 screen would say CLEAN TAPE!.
Did have a glitch when I used the newer 83min SQ version but not sure if that was because I didn't have enough time to forward and rewind the tape prior to recording.
But, (and hopefully it will continue) the PQ63 and SD have worked great together and better than any other tape I've used. Best price too.

[John Estcourt]

Hi, it was using PD 170 and VX2100 that I first had problems with Pana tapes I was using MQ. funny thing is last night I thought i had my first drop out on a sony premium recording HDV on canon XH-A1 ( just half second of pixilation) but i re captured and it was gone, obviously just a glitch during capture.

[Michael Chenoweth]

I've been using MQ or PQ Panny tapes since 2002 - no problems at all. I make sure heads are cleaned regularly but this is on DVX100's, Sony TRV900, Sony V1U, Z1U, XLH1, XHA1s and HV20's / 30's - the whole reason I didn't buy on to the "HDV quality" master tapes. Plenty of good experience with the Pannys.

[Christopher Lefchik]

I used over twenty Panasonic tapes on a multi-day Christmas concert shoot early this month. Nearly all were 63 minute AMQ's purchased about 2-3 weeks before from B&H; three were 63 minute MQ's that I have had for a while. The tapes were used in two Sony HVR-V1U cameras to shoot HDV format footage.

I reviewed a number of the tapes on downtime during the shoot, and I've seen some of the footage as I ran the capture process the last few days. I haven't seen anything I could characterize as a HDV format type dropout. When reviewing the footage there was one moment on an AMQ tape where the footage paused for just a split-second, but there was no pixelation that I remember, so it could have just been a momentary playback hiccup.

[Brian Boyko]

I've had problems with Panasonic tapes in both of my HV20s. Using PQ tapes when the shoot is important.

I had a two-camera set-up for my last interview simply because I knew I couldn't trust either tape to record fully. I was right - both tapes had one dropout (luckily in different locations!)

I'm seriously thinking about what I should do next. I'm thinking of selling both my HV20s and picking up a single HF11. I'll lose the manual focus wheel (though HF11 still has manual focus.)

How would you go about cleaning out the tape heads so that you don't get wet/dry problems switching from Pannys to Sony?

[Andrew Smith]

Hi Tobin,

I've got a Panasonic tape from when I first got my camera and will be sending it to you soon.

Interestingly, when the tape has dropouts upon playback I can rewind it and play through it again and the dropout does not occur. In other words the data is still there and was simply unreadable for that moment.

Nothing like having an intermittent glitch to track down. Hopefully this will help the people at Panasonic.

I've since switched over to only using Sony tapes.

Andrew

[Chris Light]

never a problem with Panny AMQ tapes....stay away from JVC ProHD tapes...look at my last 3 entries on vimeo..not pretty.

Chris
Chris Light on Vimeo