Stray Pixels

BriceWilliams wrote on 6/6/2006, 6:51 AM
After Capturing 5-hours of video, I noticed stray black/gray blocks and a few green/red blocks that when played back in real time appear to be white specs. I'm using JVC SR-VS30 to capture. The "heads need cleaning" icon is not shown. And other tapes seem to print to tape and capture clean. 4 cameras have been used, 3 GL2 (brand new) and 1-PD150

The 3-GL2s had been set to LPmode (not my choice) and PD150 to SPmode. The Sony camera had one instants out of 2 hrs of tape that had stray pixels (1-2 seconds long 3-5 pixels at various spots) Is this a Vegas issue or possible equipment issue? Any thoughts would be appreciated

Comments

farss wrote on 6/6/2006, 7:07 AM
Almost certainly tape dropouts.
That's one reason not to use LP, sometimes ya get lucky and others ya don't.

Try capturing the tapes on another VCR / camera and / or cleaning the heads, might get lucky. Be warned, if you can notice them now they get worse when you encode for DVD.

Technically LP recorded tapes are only really guaranteed to playback on the device that recorded them and even then.....

Some have no trouble with LP, then again some people drink and drive and never get caught.

Bob.
riredale wrote on 6/6/2006, 9:53 AM
As Farss mentioned, try to get the shooting GL2 to use as a transfer device--maybe it is just enough out of spec to cause incompatibility at LP speed with other DV devices.

Yes, I've used LP exclusively for years and hundreds of tapes, no problems whatsoever. I've only had to use a different camera or deck for transfer a few times, however. It was really nice having 90 minutes available for shooting an hour+ program. I guess I could have used 80-minute tapes, but they probably bring their own issues, and they're much less readily available.

Now with HDV I'm stuck with 63 minutes of tape time.
BriceWilliams wrote on 6/9/2006, 3:57 PM
Thanks for the input. I haven't checked forum lately (just received Audio Technica wireless mic-test drive) but I do appreciate your response. I did notice the pixels did get worse when rendered to DVD.