Urgent Question about Audio Dropouts

B

bmwergs

Member
I am switching from the normal Panasonic tapes to Panasonic PQ tapes. I ran the head cleaner before switching. However with an 83min PQ tape, my audio experiences frequent dropouts. Video is fine. I switched back to a regular tape and there were no dropouts. Then I tried a 63min PQ tape and it also worked fine. Is there something about the longer tapes that would cause a problem? Could that one 83min tape happen to be a faulty one? It's the only one I have right now.

If you have any idea, please let me know - I'm shooting a wedding tomorrow.
 
How many hours on the head? Sometimes, the head wear to a certain kind of tape. And when you switch, the head doesn't make a good contact with the tape. That could be your problem. Also, that head cleaner tape is the devil. It should only be used in emergencies. Sometimes the head cleaner tape can be more trouble than it's worth. It is very abrasive and lays down extra oil on the head to clean whatever is there. One last thing, the long running tapes are much thinner than normal tapes. Making them much more fragile. Hope that helps.

Jason
 
Only about 110 hours on the heads. Yeah if the longer tape is thinner maybe that kind in particular is not contacting the heads well.
 
Yeah I just stuck with the 60 min tape. It was a long ceremony, so I had to switch at one point (not a very important point though).
 
i heard that longer 83min tapes can cause audio dropouts because of syncronization issues with the video and audio. i would just stay away from longer tapes in general.
 
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