To Speed or not to Speed
 

Hey all,

I've been having a blast with my new A1's, but I am having one issue. Typically I press record and watch the record light flash on and off until it is solid on and then I assume tape is speeding and I'm ready to go.

However, I've found several times that even though the light is on full, when I capture the tape I am missing the beginning few seconds. Mostly this means we miss the slate which is annoying, but workable. When we are skipping the slate, however, we've missed a few lines.

Does anyone else have this issue? Is there any way to know that tape is truly rolling? I have been using free-run time code, so I don't see the tape counter, only the timecode which is always running.

Thanks in advance...

Moved from XL to XH.

One comment Barry... I've tried to make it a habit as often as possible to start rolling tape *several* seconds before the shot actually begins, ever since my initial DV days began ten years ago. And that's one additional advantage of a FireStore, the ability to get a good ten seconds worth of pre-roll recorded, prior to actually pressing the rec / pause button.

I've also found that the A1 can sometimes take its time getting up to speed, but I've never lost anything off the front of a shot when the red light is solid.

Barry

I'm using the vcr stop function with the camera section still powered allowing
you to adjust settings without worrying about tape friction on video heads.

i've assigned this function to a custum key. This cuts a lot of wear and tear
on the heads even when using the cam as deck when editing.

It responds slower to full running point, but once there it records definately
via viewfinder indication.

page 87 & 41 manual.

Took me a while to get used to a longer runup to rec. but worth preserving
the heads.

Greetings/Herman

UPDATE:

Lo and behold, the tape was speeding. The problem was that somehow while fcp was importing the clips it was not importing the first couple seconds of each clip.

Sooooooo...

Anyone have a solution for that? I'll post in that forum once I've had a chance to look around first.

Just a hunch. It could be due to using free run TC. I don't know of any NLE that doesn't have some sort of problem with it.

Bill

The XLH1 has a similar issue. When the heads spin down it takes several seconds for them to get back up to speed before recording begins. I think the problem might be in the GOP compression at the start of the take.