Looks like I filmed it with a mobile

DavidR wrote on 6/21/2012, 7:55 PM

This will be a long post so apologies in advance, but please read all of it before replying if you are able to help.
I am using Pro 8 and DVD arch 5 and have made over 50 films without problem untill the wedding I filmed 3 weeks ago. It was a 2 camera edit with a panasonic GS400 and a DVX100
The problem is the quality of the final DVD. It looks like I had filmed the whole thing on a mobile phone; but with some strange differences.
The footage looked fine on the 21" trinitron CRT I use for Vegas while I was editing it and when I played back the finished dvd on the same monitor full screen it looked good as well. I also tested it on the 15" widescreen LCD monitor I use as a focus assist when filming and again all was good, though I did notice it was letterboxed which I was not expecting.
The problems started when I played the DVD in a standard DVD player on to a 26" flat panel TV. It was awful. Everything was blocky and smeared.
The faces were the worst bit, they looked like they were painted on with a 16 colour gamut by a 4 year old and anything moving was out of focus. The strange bit is that when everything is still it slowly comes back in to focus and if they keep still long enough it is pin sharp. Cutting the cake is a good example of the problem. The cake is pin sharp and the bride and groom are soft focus square block people who are going to lynch me.
I thought that there may have been a problem with the original footage so I put the tapes back in the cameras and played them back through the 15" widescreen LCD . And there was. It looked crap. It looked like the final DVD; all blocky and smeared unless they all stood perfectly still. I was ready to call them to offer a full refuld untill I realised that the final film, on DVD , on the same 15" screen looks perfect.
So what's going on?
I made the DVD by dumping avi files to architect and telling it to do the work and that worked a lot better than sending architect MPEG-2 files which is the correct way of working but looked a lot worse
I have tried deinterlace and motion blur but none of that has helped. The only other thing I noticed is that if I right click on the timeline and do properties media attributes DV i get 720 x 576 x 24 and not the 25 I was expecting to see. Is this relevant?
The DVX100 can do progressive 24 but was set to "normal" and the GS400 has no alternative than 25 fps anyway.
I will have to make a " Windows PC Optimised" DVD for them as they are collecting on Saturday but eventually I will have to fix or explain why that is all they are going to get.

Help please.

Back to post

Comments

DavidR wrote on 6/23/2012, 3:12 AM

Morning everyone and thanks for all the comments and suggestions so far.
The tapes I use are Panasonic (for professional) AV-DVM63PQ and 83 when the camera spec says it works with the 83 minute version.
They are not new tapes, I have been reusing the same ones for years but usually test record before every job. You could argue that they may have come to the end of their life but again, all 5 at the same time in 2 cameras?
I am going to set all my kit up today for a church concert I have to do at 7.30 tonight and clean and test everything.
Unfurtunately I have a day job so I am going to have to leave this untill I have the results of tonights show and see if it is the same with different tapes and cameras to try to eliminate hardware from the equation before I post back here again, so if there is no new post from me for a week don't take it personally.

farss wrote on 6/23/2012, 3:37 AM

"They are not new tapes, I have been reusing the same ones for years but usually test record before every job. You could argue that they may have come to the end of their life but again, all 5 at the same time in 2 cameras?"

Good grief, tapes have reached the end of their life the first time you record on them.
Reusing tapes is courting disaster.
You record a tape in your DVX100 as say 24p, then you reuse it and record 25p except just a little bit of the previous recording remains at the beginning of the tape.
Put tape in camera / VCR and the machine reads that and assumes the rest of the tape is the same.
The other (not) good trick when reusing tapes is to mix DV and HDV on the one tape, that really causes some exciting things to happen.

Bob.

DavidR wrote on 6/23/2012, 3:49 AM

Good point Bob.
I will be using brand new tapes tonight so lets see what happens.
I have never recorded at 24 p or HD so all the tapes have only ever been used for 25p SD, but your right. Time to use new ones.
I'm not convinced this answers all the questions though

farss wrote on 6/23/2012, 6:13 AM

David,
I'm not convinced either. It 's only a theory but so far it fits everything you've told me and nothing else I can think of or others have suggested fits well with all the symptoms.

If my theory is correct you should be able to get around the problem you're having with the previous shoot by winding the tapes forward a few seconds before you start to play them or capture them.

Bob.

DavidR wrote on 6/23/2012, 9:55 AM

It's the camera. There is a fault with the DVX100
I played a tape I had recorded a year ago through it on to the 15" LCD and it was perfect. Recorded over it and played the new footage back and it was like watching animated cartoon Lego bricks. All square blocks with shimmering edges. Tried 4 other tapes with the same results.
Have cleaned the tape heads 4 times and have got some improvement but faces still have lips with lots of jagged lines drawn over them. Looks OK when nothing is moving but who films nothing moving?
No idea what the exact fault is and how much it will cost to fix but that is definitely the source of the problem.
Whatever weird things Vegas was trying to do to correct it was throwing the footage from the other cabera out as well.
If I only look at the footage from the GS400 it is fine.

Feel free to start guessing what the camera fault could be.

Thanks all

David

gpsmikey wrote on 6/23/2012, 10:20 AM

Wait a minute - didn't you say it was both cameras with the same exact problem?

I played the tapes back in the same cameras they were recorded from and they were all bad. 5 tapes in 2 cameras all looking the same.

If it was indeed just one camera, then that does point at the camera.

mikey

MUTTLEY wrote on 6/23/2012, 12:07 PM

Don't know if you used fresh tapes or not going back to your original post so not saying that's your problem but as you later mentioned "Recorded over it and played the new footage back and it was like watching animated cartoon Lego bricks. All square blocks with shimmering edges." Rule number one is NEVER re-use tapes. Okay, well, it might not be rule number one but it defiantly is A rule, well just call it "of thumb" for now, doing so is just an invitation for problems.

- Ray
Underground Planet

farss wrote on 6/23/2012, 4:52 PM

"Feel free to start guessing what the camera fault could be"

Most likely a bad head clog if as you say cleaning the heads made some improvement. Bad head clogs need to be cleaned up with isopropanol and a chamois cleaner, don't use cotton buds / qtips.

I'd still urge you to try a NEW tape in the camera. At under $5 each.....

Bob.

DavidR wrote on 6/24/2012, 6:03 PM

"Wait a minute - didn't you say it was both cameras with the same exact problem?

Yes I did, but on reflection that was not entirely accurate.

Footage on the final film looked bad from both cameras but after re looking at the original footage from the GS400 it appears to be better than the footage from the DVX100, not great, but a whole lot better. I think re using 83 minute tapes was definitely the problem with this one. A more fundemental problem with the DVX100 made it difficult to differentiate the problems.

DavidR wrote on 6/24/2012, 6:12 PM

I dont think so unfortunately.. Did a simple test.. Plugged the DVX100 in to the 15" monitor and looked at what was comming through the lens without recording anything.
Square blocky people.
The fault is in the camera. Exaserbated by reusing tapes, possibly and well done to Vegas from making a silk purse from this sows ear at least for playback on a laptop if not a DVD player connected to a TV with the rubbish I gave it to work with.
If anyone is interested I could post a still showing just what I have been talking about so you can all have a look, if that's possible on this board; or a short clip
$5 for a new tape. In England Panasonic AY-DVM63PQ (for professional) tapes are £7 each

ushere wrote on 6/24/2012, 6:27 PM

been using these for YEARS, never a problem with hdv. (used once of course!)

http://www.pcx.com.au/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=626

DavidR wrote on 6/24/2012, 6:33 PM

"been using these for YEARS, never a problem with hdv. (used once of course!)"

this is going off at a tangent, however these are not available in the UK unless I want to import 40,000 of them. (I dont)

Opampman wrote on 6/24/2012, 7:02 PM

I'm sure B&H will be able to ship these to the UK and you won't need to order 40k of them. I'm also certain they should be available at a number of suppliers in the UK.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/352232-REG/Sony_DVM63HDR_DVM_63HD_HDV_Cassette_63.html

Kent

MUTTLEY wrote on 6/25/2012, 12:19 PM

Another piece of advice that this thread reminded me of from my days of using tapes is the suggestion to stick with one brand of tape. The theory being that different manufactures use different means of lubricating their tapes, some wet, some dry, and that by swapping between the two it could mess up the heads of the camera.

This is probably nothing more than an old wive's tale, as a matter of fact Sony actually has a pdf that seems to disprove it ("The Truth About Tape Lubricant"). That said, back in the day I heeded this advice nevertheless, that along with never re-using tapes and frequently cleaning my heads opting for the "better safe than sorry" approach.

- Ray
Underground Planet

farss wrote on 6/25/2012, 3:31 PM

"$5 for a new tape. In England Panasonic AY-DVM63PQ (for professional) tapes are £7 each"

Here you go:
Sony DVM60 for 7.59 for a pack of five.
We have sold 1,000s of them down under with never a problem for recording DV, DVCAM and HDV.

Bob.

Laurence wrote on 6/25/2012, 4:49 PM

Just to expand upon what Ray said, there are two types of tape lubrication: wet and dry. Sony uses dry. Everyone else uses wet. Thus, my rule of thumb is to either use Sony tapes, or tapes that aren't Sony (and thus have wet lubrication). Mixing wet and dry lubrication is what gums things up.

By the way, I use Sony tapes since I have a Sony camera and am assuming (guessing) that these cameras are designed for their own dry lubrication tapes. In an old cheap mini DV camera I always used non Sony tapes. These days I usually shoot to memory card, but my Z7 will also shoot to tape and I use that on long documentary shoots.

farss wrote on 6/25/2012, 5:30 PM

"Sony uses dry. Everyone else uses wet."

There is no such thing as "wet", Sony have said so, Panasonic have said the same thing. A sociologist ahould write a doctoral thesis on this myth. Somebody once posted a comment that wasn't entirely correct, others jumped to the wrong conclusion and then it spread to become an urban myth.
10,000 people repeating and posting the same wrong information does not make it true. One post from the people who know the truth seem to get ignored. That is the danger of the internet.

Bob.