My worst nightmare - my reception footage is GONE

R

rkoral

New member
i filmed a wedding this past september with my dvx100b (only the 3rd that i had filmed with at this point)... everything seemed fine. i used 5 tapes for the entire day. i ONLY use panasonic dvm63pq tapes in all of my cameras.

i have finally gotten around to editing it... the first 3 captured just fine. the fourth one - reception introductions, cake cutting, first dance, etc is done for - as far as i can tell. the tape plays for about 8 seconds with TONs of noise - the entire 3/4 of the right side of the screen is blue and the 1/4 on the left side you can make out some of the images - the audio is pretty screwy and then all of a sudden it goes all blue. nothing. time code doesn't move at all... i fast forwarded through the whole tape and looked for anything - but there is nothing. i went to the end of the tape and recorded 10 seconds (mind you - this is 4 months later) - and i played it back and it works fine.

i called panasonic.. they have no idea. haven't ever heard of that. they thought that the tape could possibly be bad and he suggested i buy the AMQ tapes.

what am i to do besides feel terrible?

rk
 
Damn, that is horrible. How old is your DVX? Did it get dropped or suffer some other catastrophe that could have damaged it?

You should pm Barry Green. If anyone might know about this it's probably him.
 
The crazy thing is this was only the 3rd wedding I had shot with it... I bought the camera brand new... it has worked flawlessly since. That same day, I used a tape (after the bunk tape) and it is fine. I've stored them all in the same box, same place, etc... there is nothing else I can think of. I'm dreading the conversation I'm going to have here shortly with my client. Fortunately, it didn't happen because I'm an idiot.. at least I don't think so... :)
 
You might want to lift the guard lid on the tape and look at the tape itself to be sure it looks mechanically sound. If it's looped or pinched, you might be able to salvage something. It's a low likelihood problem because it sounds like the tape transport is working, but it's something that can go wrong with just one tape.
To lift the guard, you have to press the little latch button, and be very careful not to make it worse...though it sounds like the whole tape is lost already.
 
Sorry to hear your experience. I had a similar thing happen on my old Pana GS400. I taped about 20 tapes during one vacation. One tape was totally blank, though it had wound to the end of the tape. I believe I hit the record button too fast while turning the camera on, and it started advancing before the correct head was engaged. Technically, probably a firmware bug. I wouldn't be surprised if this happened with a lot of cameras. Same thing happened to me with a DAT audio tape many years ago. Have to turn it on and let it get fully set before hitting record.
 
Hundred bucks says this is a TAPE issue, not a camera issue. Where have the tapes been stored? Any chance something spilt on them?

My guess is that somewhere between the shooting and the editing, something occured to damage the tape.
 
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