Did I just break my camera?

[William N Zarvis]

This could be a very embarrassing question with a painful answer...

Last night was the first night I used my new FX1. It was so dark in the club, where my cousin had asked me to record his performance, that when I put the blank mini-dv tape in and started to record, the LCD flashed the "cassette-tape" symbol. I looked at the mini-dv case and saw that I had put in the tape cleaner and hit record!!! But only for ten seconds.

So my question is, did I damage my head? I remember reading that you should never press "record" when a cleaning tape is in your camera. Did I just ruin my new camera before I even got to use it?

I quickly stopped the camera and switched the tapes. I put in the right tape and recorded over 40 minutes of footage. When I got home to review the footage (thru the LCD & headphones only) Everything came out fine. It looks really good (even in DV mode) and there were no noticeable problems at all.

What an idiot I am for not seeing that the tape I put in was a head cleaner!

Tell me not to worry or that I am lucky and to never do it again!

(Another thing was I had a problem with was that my headphones didn't work when I was recording. I couldn't hear a thing! I was using my ipod headphones. Is there a setting to turn this on during recording.

When I got home to watch the tape on my camera my a different pair of headphones worked then. But they seemed very, very quiet. Is there a way to increase their sound?)

Thanks for your time and attention guys!

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by William N Zarvis

Tell me not to worry or that I am lucky and to never do it again!

Hey William: Don't worry, you're lucky. Just never do that again. Feel better now? :-)

Seriously, I'd think you're OK if it really only ran 10 seconds. I'm not sure that there is any real difference in the way the tape runs between record and play, maybe someone else can answer that . But 10 seconds is around the amount of time you'd run the cleaner anyway, and since you've never run a cleaning tape before I doubt that it subjected the heads to a lot of abrasion.

Regarding the headphones, did you adjust the volume using the buttons that are revealed when you open the monitor screen? That's how you control playback and monitoring volume. If they're set to the max then maybe you need headphones with a different impedance rating. I think there's a menu setting somewhere to choose whether the channels are mixed together during monitoring, that might have an effect. Look in the audio menu.

Relax and enjoy your new camera!

[William N Zarvis]

Phew...Thanks Boyd. I was worried someone was going to post a response like, "Oh My God! You're Ruined!"

I'll explore the audio settings and try different headphones, see if that works. Thanks again!

[Mike Teutsch]

Actually, it is a good policy to run a head cleaner prior to using a new camera, so you probably did the best thing you could have done!

Mike

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

I think there's a menu setting somewhere to choose whether the channels are mixed together during monitoring

Just looked on my Z1. Choose AUDIO SET > AUDIO MONI and choose either:

CH1,CH2
CH1
CH2
CH1+CH2

So if you only recorded audio on channel 1 and the monitor was set to channel 2 then you wouldn't hear anything. I think the default is CH1,CH2 however so most likely your level was just too low on the headphones, and the mike level might have been low itself (the auto level seems pretty low on my Z1, but it can still be boosted cleanly in post).

Caveat: the Z1 menus may be different from the FX1...