Major Crisis On Location..help..!

K

kenpod

New member
Hello all..

I am a newbie in this cool world of DV and currently shooting for an organisation working with Tsunami affected children in Sri Lanka.

The cam is the 100B with a Sennheiser ME-66 (bought before reading this forum) purchased 3weeks ago. I shoot in P25mode in letterbox (hope that is not to bad..) with cinelike this and that switched on and manual iris and focus.

As we was about to start filming interviews today the cam wouldnt playback any recorded video. It seems to record normally counting time and remaning time and so on, but when I then switch to vcr mode to review the recorded material it just plays a black screen... without timelapse or anything...???

I recorded as late as yesterday evening without problems.. I should mention that I had problems with getting my Sennheiser to work today and I have been trying out different audiosettings but I cant imagine to have been able to **** up anything to do with recording or playback..

I tried to reset and record in different modes even.. with no luck. When viewing old tapes they show normally, but I cant seem to record to them either..??

I did the interview today with crossed fingers that it records despite, but since I will be doing many more I am desperate to fix this problem...

Hope anyone have heard of this issue... Thanks..

Kenny the novice
 
Are you getting any warning messages at all when you try and record or playback?

Has the camera worked before?

I've used the DV100b in Nigeria, Canary Islands and Jerusalem and had a similar problem. At first it gave error messages and recorded useless footage, later just recorded jumpy footage with messed up timecode. I took it in for a service and the technicians found nothing wrong. I imagine it was due to atmospheric (heat and humidity) issues. Now that I'm back in Madrid there seem to be no problems. You could try leaving the camera in a dry cool place (hotel with a/c) for a few hours then see if it works.

My recommendation for your shoot needs now would be to hire another camera. Until you know what's causing the problem you don't want to rely on the DVX100. I'd imgine you could pick up a PD150 or something similar in Colombo.

Good luck, and sorry to hear about the problem. Let us know how you get on.
 
Two hours later..!!

Two hours later..!!

Hey again..

Thanks Cornelius..

I have now tried to playback the here a few hours later and it plays some broken very scattered images full of black areas... And then in the end of 35min recording the last minute is flawless..!!!! And I tried to record some more now and it is also fine..!

Is this cam very affected by humidity..? Because I have noticed when playing back recorded material earlier that it once in a while falls out saying "wrong format" which seemed strange to me..!!

So are there no options than to keep it cool up to the time of recording...or..?

If this is as good as this cam gets it seems like a very fragile and in these hot areas like a pretty useless tool then..!!

Anyone else with the same experiences and maybe solutions...??

Regards form Kenny
 
I would take it back to your dealer and see whats going on. Doesnt sound right to me at all. If its a humidity problem you should see a little red flashing symbol come up on your screen... it shouldnt just record normally but play back all blothched.
 
I sometimes get that wrong format thing but it usually turns out fine. I'm just gonna cross me fingers that its not serious, and besides i've got warranty coverage for a bit.
 
When I did get a warning message it was the "Auto Off" and the "T Reel lock" or "S Reel Lock" I don't remember which now.

Then when playing back it would tell me the tape was an unrecognised format. It happened one time when I was doing a satellite feed off the camera. I had to eject the tape and restart playing it a few times till I could play the edited piece in one go.

The most frustrating thing is that it is an intermittent problem. The problems you are experiencing seem similar to mine. I will not use the camera for an important job now. What annoys me the most is that the tech support didn't see any problem when I took it in.

While I was in Jerusalem having the same problem I tried every different tape brand I could without success.

Kenpod: if I were you I wouldn't use the camera any longer on your shoot. Not worth the risk, there's nothing worse than discovering all the problems in the edit suite.
 
I'm using it in Singapore for the last few months, very humid here (80% or higher) no problem. Tapes used does matter (we use SONY ordinary DV tapes or Panasonic Masters only), and after every shoot, put the camera in a dry cabinet for the night after thorough cleaning including a tape head clean after a few of full day shoots.

Using the camera for almost 6 months with no problem and with very hectic shooting schedule the last 3 months, almost everyday. Just have to make sure the TC is running, I have all the ststus display switched on so to avoid any mishap. Had this problem on our old PD 150.
 
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