Talk about tape dropouts...

[24Peter]

Man, what a bummer. Tonight I went to playback about 45 mins of video from Xmas for my family and about 5 mins into it, the tape just started dropping out like crazy (freezing every few seconds). Eventually the tape just stopped playing. Lost all my family holiday footage.

I tried cleaning the heads twice hoping it was just a playback issue, but it didn't help. (I did record 5 mins of test footage on a new tape after cleaning the heads and it was fine.) I've had my HV20 since March 2007 and have never had a tape that didn't have some dropouts. I'm using Panasonic AMQ tapes too.

Over the years I shot dozens and dozens of tapes and never had one that was unplayable like this. Can't wait for a solid state 24p /HDV camera. This totally sucked tonight.

[kadzbiz]

Real bummer dude.

[Worley]

Just a bad tape, maybe?

[24Peter]

Good news: turns out it was an HDMI cable/port issue on my brother-in-law's new 50" plasma. I switched out the cable and used a different port and worked fine (other than my usual 2-3 dropouts per tape). So... I didn't lose all that footage.

But it makes me wonder: the issue I was seeing mimicked (albeit in the extreme) tape dropouts. Wonder if all the dropouts I've seen in the past are a data transfer issue rather than actual dropouts...

[Rikki]

I dont wish to tempt fate but I havent suffered from this myself at all. I did a sweaty 5 hours rave in a nightclub and expected at least a few dropouts but it was fine.

I stick to sony dv tapes and run the sony head cleaner every 10 hours worth of record/playback.