LP tape won't play back

[Gordon Tanner]

Hi. This is my first posting here. I've searched the forums (and other large swaths of the Internet) for a problem identical to mine and I can't find one, so I'm hoping someone here will have some good advice.

I am a first-time filmmaker, shooting a documentary about a theatre company. I recently shot a 75 minute theatre piece. I only had the one camera (XL2), and one chance to shoot the play, so decided to go with LP mode (I also only had 60 minute tapes) and not risk losing part of the play due to a tape change. I would not make the same decision again.

When I play the tape back on the XL2 the speed displayed in the camera is SP, and the playback is jerky, with lots of artifacts, and the sound is badly distorted. Also, the timecode is moving faster than it should. This would seem to indicate that the camera is not identifying the tape as an LP tape, and is playing it back too quickly. I have tried setting the VCR manually to LP, but as soon as I press play it switches back to SP. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there some way to force the camera to play back in LP?

I shot other footage on the same day, same camera, in SP mode, and it is all fine.

Having *now* read the manual, which explicitly states "we do not recommend using the LP mode for important footage", I have to wonder why they leave it on the camera at all?

Cheers,
Gordon

[Jonathan Jones]

Hi Gordon, and welcome to the forums.

I personally have no experience with the LP characteristics of the XL2, as it is a setting I have simply never used, mostly due to concerns for greater chance of drop-out, etc.

But what I would suggest first in this case would be to see if you can try to play back the tape in another dv camera or deck, even just a simple consumer-level dv camera, and see if it properly recognizes the LP mode and plays the content back properly.

If it plays back fine, than you might just consider capturing that content into your computer from that camera, and if it does not play back properly, and continues to give you erratic playback anomalies, I suspect that it is likely that the content was recorded that way.

-Jon