Help! DVX100 shoots banding-blocking-boxing-digital broken up

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Gang_Green

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My DVX100 (original version) has stopped recording to tape properly. It has has been a solid rock for its 4 plus years of heavy industrial use but on a very important shoot this weekend I was horrified to find (afterwards) that after about 30 mins of filming everything i had shot on tape was pixelated, broken up, digital bands and boxes!

I have never ever even had a so called "drop out " before and don't know if this is what everyone is referring to when they say "drop out" but whatever it is- its a big problem. I always use Panasonic brand tape and never mix tape brands to avoid problems. I have tried playing the tape back in my XL2 and it plays back the same way no matter what camera. I have tested the DVX further and Anything I tape now has the banding blocking problem which is pronounced on moving shots, or when the talent moves.

Now, The only problem I did notice while shooting was a Red Circle with a black X inside it that popped up for about 20 seconds during shooting. I had never seen that message before so i did not know what was going on and later forgot about it.

Luckily I had two cameras with me during the shoot so I switched to the XL2 for half of the filming. However I would kill someone to get the footage I shot recovered. The project was filming a promotional video for Donald Trump and his daughter Ivonkia Trump for a design party and interview to approve the construction and interior design and architecture for his Trump Towers Atlanta, so its kind of a big important project... Donald Trump Huge. but i guess there is no way to recover the corrupted footage huh? Donald trump when he sees this hes going to look at me and say "Your Fired". That could be bad for my career. JK. -Actually Donald will probably never watch this but the Architect of the Trump Towers will. I have a big stomach ache right now.
 
Sounds like you need your heads cleaned pretty good. Take it in somewhere to get them cleaned or any other method you can find. What you're geting is glitching basically. It's common with dirty heads. I believe there is a thread somewhere on here that tells you how to clean the heads yourself, but I would take it in somewhere professionally myself.
 
But wouldn't a dirty head start off with here and there problems at first? This started off with severe problems right away. There was no warning.

This looks like someone would have had to open the tape door and drooped open a bag of potting soil to get this result.
 
I had been mixing the panasonic consumer tapes with professional tapes. I thought that they were both dry lubes and that it wouldn't matter.
 
I have looked in the DVX manual and the warning I was getting (red x in circle) means:

"This flashes when the cylinder head is dirty"

I thought i new all the warnings but i missed this one. oops.
 
fishquail said:
But wouldn't a dirty head start off with here and there problems at first? This started off with severe problems right away. There was no warning.

This looks like someone would have had to open the tape door and drooped open a bag of potting soil to get this result.
Click to expand...

When something gets stuck in there, it can screw up everything immediately. I had my playback ability completely ruined because of an almost microscopic grit that got stuck in a cogwheel. It doesn't take a lot if unwanted particles get in there...

Get the camera professionally cleaned.
 
I have seen this happen near immediately (meaning, within an hour or two's use) when switching tape brands. In particular, going between Sony or JVC and Panasonic will definitely cause the problem.

To be safe, we never, except in the most dire emergency, use anything but the one type of tapes we always buy. I don't care if the lubes are wet or dry, we still don't mix... and since we've stopped mixing brands, we've had zero problems. I just buy like 100 tapes at a time and when I get below maybe 20, reorder.

The bozos at Best Buy will insist that there's absolutely no difference between tape brands, but I've seen it happen consistently with several different camcorders.

If you can't get the heads cleaned professionally, you can use the tape cleaner, and it will probalby do the job, but just be aware that it does cause some wear on the heads, it's basically sandpaper.
 
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