Bizarre problem (help!)

smashguy37 wrote on 5/11/2007, 12:06 PM

I have this really weird problem and I'm having trouble figuring it out.

My camcorder had a dirty head so I got it cleaned last year. My sister in law used a shitty tape and I started getting blips and artifacts and crap again on footage. I got it cleaned months later (recently) and shot an event with the camcorder. When I watched the tape I still had really bad blips. The artifacts jump up more when there is motion, not so much when the camera is still. I took it back to the shop and they re-cleaned it and checked everything out for free for me and they played the tape and it looked fine.

It was still messed up here so I tried another computer with a firewire port and it was still bad. I bought another cable today and nothing has changed. I've ruled out the firewire card and cable and the camcorder is supposedly fine.

TROUBLESHOOTING:
- If I capture real time with the camcorder by capturing as I record without tape, I get the blips in the capture window, especially with any sort of motion. If I hit the capture button it doesn't show any blips while capturing with me moving around.

- Regardless of that, the footage I'll have taped using the above mentioned method will still produce blips and artifacts.

But, the big thing is that if I take that same file and watch it in Windows Media Player for example, I see no blips. To double check, I took some DVDs I made from tapes with this blip problem from a while back and I don't see blips on the computer or TV from it when I watch it (I don't know why I hadn't noticed before).
To explain the "blips" better, it's similar to the effect of zooming in really close to an image in Photoshop and slowly moving left and right with the scroll bar at the bottom...which causes the image to break up.

So I'm assuming this is now some sort of software/setting issue. The guys at the shop have no idea, and I'm cool with the footage turning out okay after it's been rendered and burned to disc, but it still bugs me and makes me wonder. If there some sort of setting I should be looking into? It seems to only happen in the capture window and Vegas itself, but no where else.

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/11/2007, 12:11 PM

After you capture the video and play it on the Vegas timeline, are you seeing the blips?

Dave T2

johnmeyer wrote on 5/11/2007, 12:58 PM

I have seen exactly what you describe on someone else's camcorder, and I think it may be something wrong with the camera, beyond just dirty heads. This is especially true since you are seeing bad video even when capturing directly from the camera. Probably not much you can do to salvage the tape you already made.

The only thing I can suggest to try to salvage the tape, is to try is to play the tape on another camcorder. However, I did this with my friend's camcorder (the one I mentioned above), and the tape didn't play on my good camcorder either. His camcorder was a Sony TRV-11, and he took it with him on his relief efforts to Thailand after the tsunami, and into Bay St. Louis, MS and New Orleans the week after Katrina. It is my belief that it got moisture and crud into it beyond just the heads (those were some very humid, moldy places, and he was camping out). My guess is that you'll have to have your camcorder completely overhauled, preferably by a factory authorized shop.

smashguy37 wrote on 5/11/2007, 2:49 PM

Yes, I see blips when it's on the timeline. However, I just rendered it out, and I see no blips when playing the raw .avi files in Media Player or in my MPEG that'll I'll be burning to disc. Which still leads me to believe that it's the software, because I've already had the shop go over all aspects of the camera and they are all fine.

Especially considering that the video captures perfectly fine IF the capture button is pressed to record. If I'm just watching the video in the capture window without recording it, then I see blips. And when the shop played the tape they saw no blips. Messed huh? Thanks for the replies though.

corug7 wrote on 5/11/2007, 4:26 PM

Probably has something to do with your video card more than anything. If you watch the video on your camera or on a regular television do you see the same artifacting, or is it okay?

I use a $45,000 encoding computer at work and the video always looks a bit off when encoding, but fine in other applications (Windows Media, Quicktime, etc).

farss wrote on 5/11/2007, 4:31 PM

Do these 'blips' look like horizontal tearing of the frame, from what you say about PS that's what it sounds like.
If so there's nothing wrong with the tape or the camera. Just how sometimes the preview window in Vegas interacts with the screen's refresh. If you blink you can also create this effect. If you go through the footage frame by frame can you see this problem?
Tape problems almost always also cause serious glitches in the audio. Visually, minor ones look like twinkling stars and that's nothing like what you're describing.
A real tape dropout will never disappear when you make a DVD, if anything they get a lot worse.

Bob.

TLF wrote on 5/11/2007, 10:51 PM

Just a thought based on something I witnessed last night.

I had downloaded some footage from a Canon HV20, a mt2 file. Loaded it into Vegas, and it had 'blips' in it - sort of digital jaggies running vertically in certain areas where there was motion.

It turned out that the footage was HDV NTSC 29.997 but my project was set to PAL DV. Once I changed the setting, the picture was perfect.

So, perhaps the project settings are incorrect.

Worley?

smashguy37 wrote on 5/12/2007, 9:46 AM

I don't know, I had an older computer with a built in video card in the fall, and I had the same problem. I was having bad dropouts and audio problems last year, but that was because the video head was very dirty before it got cleaned from using shitty tapes.

I would love to show you guys an example, but even as I go through the timeline frame by frame, I can't seem to land on a frame that shows a blip, it just disappears...but that probably has something to do with the interlaced/progressive scanning (I'm only looking at one frame which is why I can't see it in still shots...?). Either why they move really fast, mostly on motion, and parts of the image break up and move out of the line with the original image and it's horizontal, though I'm not sure if I'd call that tearing. I'm used to seeing the lines from the different scanning happening, but this is just ridiculous.

I also checked my project settings and it's what it should be -- NTSC, 29.97, etc, etc. I watched the footage on a TV yesterday straight from the camera and I couldn't see any artifacting, or create any myself by running it in camera mode and watching myself on the TV.

smashguy37 wrote on 5/13/2007, 6:05 PM

I was watching this video on YouTube (

and watch during the middle of the video where he brings his acoustic guitar up close to the camera and is strumming. Watch his strumming hand -- you'll see exactly what I'm seeing in Vegas, except sometimes mine gets worse than you see in that video.

farss wrote on 5/13/2007, 6:14 PM

That video plays fine for me, well considering it's Youtube.
As I sadi before there's nothing wrong with your camera, Vegas or anything else.
Yesterday I edited footage from $80,000 cameras, same thing happened. I can assure you there's nothing wrong with those cameras or my $15K VCR. And the final product doesn't have any issues either. It's just the interaction between the preview screen being updated and the displays refresh frequency.

So stop cleaning heads that don't need cleaning 'cause if you don't you're quite likely to wear the heads out.

Bob.

smashguy37 wrote on 5/13/2007, 8:26 PM

Well I know the camera is fine now, and of course, the heads have stopped being cleaned. I just never once came across somebody else having this problem, so it's all a bit confusing. Thanks guys.