Relieved to see this forum rescued, thank you.
As per subject, I've had this camera now for about 3 years but I've only use it seriously for about 10 jobs, shooting in DV and HDV mode.
This week I had a decent job to do and have discovered a problem. I hooked the camera up to my HD TV via HDMI to view 6 tapes. In a few instances there is an absence of frames. The recording doesn't stop, but it's as if it HAD stopped and resumed 1/2 sec later but without turning record off and on again. This problem appears in the same place if I rewind and play again but it is not the same place on each tape and it's always the same 1/2 sec or so. It has only presented itself a few times through six tapes.
My thoughts are. Is this a recording malfunction in the camera which understandably would be a major problem or is it the tapes. These tapes are JVC miniDV and were used before on a similar job, a wedding. Now obviously in the previous job I stopped and restarted the recording and this clearly produced timecode breaks at these points. I'm thinking that these are somehow burned into the tapes and when I use them again the camera fails to record over them. So unless I do a 'black' operation ( record over the whole tape in one go ) before re-using them I'm going to run into this problem.
Anyone care to give me their advice, is my camera demonstrating a fault? Or is my work practice at fault.
Peter
HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
Re: HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
Hi Peter, and welcome to the board.
Sounds to me very much like tape dropout. This is a well-known phenomenon and results in the 0.5second glitch that you experienced. Why half second? Because HDV is a long-GOP (GroupOfPictures) codec and it has a keyframe every half-second approxinmately. So when there's a glitch it does tend to trash that whole set of 15frames (or in Ireland it will be 12 or 13 frames i think between I-frames).
My conclusion : duff tape(s). I have heard from several people that Sony HDV cams generally do NOT like JVC MiniDV tapes much. The standard recommendation is to use Sony Premium tapes and that generally should result in a far lower incidence of this type of tape dropout glitch. Of course it COULD be your V1 (tape head misalignment or similar) but i doubt it.
Here's a UK-based company and the tapes i am talking about :
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-son ... e/p1017642
If you are doing something really important, one-time-only (like a wedding) then you could consider using made-for-HDV tapes (sony makes them - they're pricey) which are much more expensive but should not give tape-dropouts at all. NO difference in image quality at all - it's just that these more prciey tapes should give lower Mean-Time-Between-Failure for stuff like tape glitches. But i would just buy a stack of sony Premiums and see how you get on with those.
Also, standard advice, do not record on the 1st minute or the last minute of each tape. Generally most tape dropouts can occur on these bits of tape, possibly due to tiny amounts of tape stretch etc.
Sounds to me very much like tape dropout. This is a well-known phenomenon and results in the 0.5second glitch that you experienced. Why half second? Because HDV is a long-GOP (GroupOfPictures) codec and it has a keyframe every half-second approxinmately. So when there's a glitch it does tend to trash that whole set of 15frames (or in Ireland it will be 12 or 13 frames i think between I-frames).
My conclusion : duff tape(s). I have heard from several people that Sony HDV cams generally do NOT like JVC MiniDV tapes much. The standard recommendation is to use Sony Premium tapes and that generally should result in a far lower incidence of this type of tape dropout glitch. Of course it COULD be your V1 (tape head misalignment or similar) but i doubt it.
Here's a UK-based company and the tapes i am talking about :
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-son ... e/p1017642
If you are doing something really important, one-time-only (like a wedding) then you could consider using made-for-HDV tapes (sony makes them - they're pricey) which are much more expensive but should not give tape-dropouts at all. NO difference in image quality at all - it's just that these more prciey tapes should give lower Mean-Time-Between-Failure for stuff like tape glitches. But i would just buy a stack of sony Premiums and see how you get on with those.
Also, standard advice, do not record on the 1st minute or the last minute of each tape. Generally most tape dropouts can occur on these bits of tape, possibly due to tiny amounts of tape stretch etc.
Re: HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
As an example of the difference in these two Sony miniDV tapes, Premium and the HDV version, here's links to both tapes on a US site :
Remember these tapes record digitally, so no difference in the image itself. Its just a matter of, potentially, lower frequency of tape dropouts. Try the Sony Premiums, and put the JVC's in a cupboard..
(Note: Packaging on the sony Premium tapes does vary around the world. Often it's blue, but not always, hence the orange wrapping on the Euro tapes, which i believe are manufactured in France (last time i checked)).
Remember these tapes record digitally, so no difference in the image itself. Its just a matter of, potentially, lower frequency of tape dropouts. Try the Sony Premiums, and put the JVC's in a cupboard..
(Note: Packaging on the sony Premium tapes does vary around the world. Often it's blue, but not always, hence the orange wrapping on the Euro tapes, which i believe are manufactured in France (last time i checked)).
Re: HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
I am very grateful for that advice. I've never heard of tape dropout before and I've been doing this now for several years. I do know that when I worked as a media technician in Higher education we had a run of very bad results from Sony tapes. It was so consistent that I forbad students from buying them. After much trial and error and a lot of digging I believe the tapes were pirated, packaged, branded, sold as genuine sony but some other cheap crap, they gave us awful recording and in particular, logging problems, so I've never bought sony tapes since as how are you supposed to know if you're getting genuine or pirated products?
I'll look into those links you posted and thanks again.
Peter
I'll look into those links you posted and thanks again.
Peter
Re: HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
You're welcome Peter. Let us know how you get on with a different tape brand. I've only ever used Sony premiums (well, 90% of the time) and i've had very very few problems with them. I think Adam (acgold7) can report similar success with these tapes.
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acgold7
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Re: HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
Yes, I can confirm this. Several hundred Sony tapes over the past seven years or so, and very few dropouts. But note that a cam which hasn't been used much -- even if it's been sitting on the shelf for years -- can be more prone to dropouts for the first few hours of head life, until the heads get "burnished" down a bit, or so I am told.
Adam
Re: HVR V1E, lost frames in recording.
Just to follow up on this. I hadn't really paid much attention before but now I'm remembering that several projects in HDV have suffered frame loss, most probably dropouts and this explains why FCP produces breaks in my clips when I know there weren't any, it's seeing the dropouts as recording breaks. I wouldn't have had time to monitor every frame as it's ingested and never noticed them all before.
Further to this I went down the road again of investigating HD capture as in Firestore etc. When I first started looking at these solutions the development of them was followed by issue after issue, with many forums posting a litany of complaints, faults, incompatibilities etc. The situation seems no better having refreshed my research into these solutions and I'm scared right off them. So I now bumped into Veescope Live http://www.veescope.com/ and it seemed to good to be true. Something I'd thought about several years ago when working in FHE, when we used to hook our PD150 directly to the mac for live capture; why not build a dedicated HD capture solution with a built in decent monitor. So veescope live does exactly that. Allows you to hook your camera directly to your mac laptop via firewire and capture live. It also does a lot more but this is what I'm interested in. Immediate feedback for focus, white balance. And it's on $99-00
Well there's a hitch as you'd expect. Your macbook lcd isn't going to give you anywhere near industry standard accurate monitor previews, they're often very washed out and very vulnerable to glare, reflections etc. It will give you adequate focus feedback and with HDV this is so important so it's worth having. What's the big downside? You have to have FCP installed on your laptop in order to use it !! So I emailed them.
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"Hello I've just begun evaluating your software. Can you tell me why I need FCP on my Macpro if I'm doing realtime capture using your software. As I edit on my DT machine it seems a massive financial hit to have to run a second license on my laptop just to use your software, it makes the $99-00 price tag suddenly jump through the roof"
Peter
Answer.
'You can install final cut on more than one machine. You just can't run two copies at the same time. We use the hdv component that comes with fcp."
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So I have to ask you, if I have to instal FCP on my laptop to use Veescope live why do I need Veescope live ? Why not simply capture with FCP and solve the dropout problem.
Thought you might be interested.
Peter
Further to this I went down the road again of investigating HD capture as in Firestore etc. When I first started looking at these solutions the development of them was followed by issue after issue, with many forums posting a litany of complaints, faults, incompatibilities etc. The situation seems no better having refreshed my research into these solutions and I'm scared right off them. So I now bumped into Veescope Live http://www.veescope.com/ and it seemed to good to be true. Something I'd thought about several years ago when working in FHE, when we used to hook our PD150 directly to the mac for live capture; why not build a dedicated HD capture solution with a built in decent monitor. So veescope live does exactly that. Allows you to hook your camera directly to your mac laptop via firewire and capture live. It also does a lot more but this is what I'm interested in. Immediate feedback for focus, white balance. And it's on $99-00
Well there's a hitch as you'd expect. Your macbook lcd isn't going to give you anywhere near industry standard accurate monitor previews, they're often very washed out and very vulnerable to glare, reflections etc. It will give you adequate focus feedback and with HDV this is so important so it's worth having. What's the big downside? You have to have FCP installed on your laptop in order to use it !! So I emailed them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hello I've just begun evaluating your software. Can you tell me why I need FCP on my Macpro if I'm doing realtime capture using your software. As I edit on my DT machine it seems a massive financial hit to have to run a second license on my laptop just to use your software, it makes the $99-00 price tag suddenly jump through the roof"
Peter
Answer.
'You can install final cut on more than one machine. You just can't run two copies at the same time. We use the hdv component that comes with fcp."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I have to ask you, if I have to instal FCP on my laptop to use Veescope live why do I need Veescope live ? Why not simply capture with FCP and solve the dropout problem.
Thought you might be interested.
Peter