Drop outs on the tapeless media when changing tapes

[Philip Howells]

I know this topic has been discussed in the forum but I couldn't find the reference so with that explanation may I pass on what I learned from a Sony engineer at an exhibition last Wednesday?

As a veteran in this game I see the benefit and inevitability of tapeless media, but would like the comfort blanket of a tape back up - at least at first. However, I read somewhere that when running both media eg Sony HRD-60 or MRC-1 or Edirol F1 with tape in say my z1s running in HDV mode I would experience a loss of data on the tapeless media when changing tapes. This is what I learned (and it now seems so obvious I'm almost ashamed!).

There's no effect on the tapeless media by stoping or removing the tape. But when the new tape is started the MPEG-2 format, the long GOP has to be formed for the tape. Since it can't output two different streams at once, the camera interrupts the recording to the tapeless media.

A rep on the Edirol stand maintained that the firewire output was essentially the same as the feed to the viewfinder ("and you don't see any disturbance on that do you?") but this was categorically denied by the Sony engineer.

Incidentally he also gave an interesting comparison between the various Sony media; HDR-60 - despite a=ll the protection it's still a disk drive; MRC-1 if power goes when a CF card is "running" you lose the lot, all 70 minutes with a 16Gb card; if power goes on an EX-1 running SXS card you lose maybe two minutes.

My inclination is to sell all three z1s, the tape player, batteries, chargers etc and buy three EX-1s - and get the benefit of vastly superior pictures. Now where's the bank book? :)

[Mark Joseph]

Taken me about 12mths to finally realise what is going on - I'd been suspecting non-Sony cards and/or FCP/OSX interface problems on the few occasions when I do uninterrupted recordings. With 100% reliable transfer into FCP when using only the MRC1k I was scratching my head.

I see two separate files created on the CF whenever I start a tape using the relay feature, and the FCP transfer doesn't usually go well, it appears to transfer but the clip duration is shorter than expected - typically the first of the MT2 only, the rest is not brought over and no warning in the log & transfer plug-in.

Another problem I have when doing dual recordings is clip transfer failures, this time with warning in the transfer plug-in. The failures never seem to occur when recording solely to CF. I suspect this due to the 133x slow speed of the card, as outlined here