![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Camcorder issues
Mar. 26th, 2006 09:17 amA couple of years ago, I started really having problems with my camcorder. Specifically, my MiniDV camcorder; stuff recorded to it wound up with macro blocking along the right hand side, and it didn't take long for it to start happening after recording. I cleaned the heads a ton, but was never happy.
Finally last year I decided to heck with it, I was going back to Hi8. I have 15 year old Hi8 tapes that still look great, and 15 minute old MiniDV tapes that are all blocked.
So now I've decided to try to get the video off the 5 or 6 tapes I have around, as best I can. Since I didn't plan on ever using the DV camcorder again, I took the cover off and started tweaking the heads. This works, with enough tweaking I can get a pretty clean playback of most of the segments, but I have to re-do it between segments (like, 10 times per tape).
Then I remembered something. DV tapes are only 60 minutes. I had 90 minutes on a tape. I remembered that I'd been recording in LP mode since I got the camcorder. The manual says the only downside to LP mode is that you can't overdub audio. Well, after checking around with some people, particularly video-guru Dermot, I determined that, in all probability, my whole problem has been in using LP mode instead of SP mode all this time.
Well, if I can get clean reads onto the hard drive of all this stuff, I'll do a bit of editing down and write them back to the tapes in SP mode, and I may even use the camcorder again (once I get the heads readjusted back to nominal position).
I have a couple of weekends work to get the video off the tapes. But that's nothing compared to the amount of time it will take me to actually do something useful with the SHOEBOX full of Hi8 tapes I have. Gotta edit some DVDs.
Finally last year I decided to heck with it, I was going back to Hi8. I have 15 year old Hi8 tapes that still look great, and 15 minute old MiniDV tapes that are all blocked.
So now I've decided to try to get the video off the 5 or 6 tapes I have around, as best I can. Since I didn't plan on ever using the DV camcorder again, I took the cover off and started tweaking the heads. This works, with enough tweaking I can get a pretty clean playback of most of the segments, but I have to re-do it between segments (like, 10 times per tape).
Then I remembered something. DV tapes are only 60 minutes. I had 90 minutes on a tape. I remembered that I'd been recording in LP mode since I got the camcorder. The manual says the only downside to LP mode is that you can't overdub audio. Well, after checking around with some people, particularly video-guru Dermot, I determined that, in all probability, my whole problem has been in using LP mode instead of SP mode all this time.
Well, if I can get clean reads onto the hard drive of all this stuff, I'll do a bit of editing down and write them back to the tapes in SP mode, and I may even use the camcorder again (once I get the heads readjusted back to nominal position).
I have a couple of weekends work to get the video off the tapes. But that's nothing compared to the amount of time it will take me to actually do something useful with the SHOEBOX full of Hi8 tapes I have. Gotta edit some DVDs.
