My tapes have "bite" marks
 

After suffering from several nasty dropouts (after taping a recent event) I looked at the tape and noticed little notch marks on the tape itself!

Is my transport bad? Can a head cleaner fix this problem?

After I ran a section of the tape again, I noticed more little nick marks, so it looks like the transport is causing this.

What is going on here? The camera only has 170hrs on the drum.

Hey Scott, did you try a different tape from a different batch?

Actually I tried an old tape that didn't have the nick marks, but after replaying the same spot on the tape, I went back to check and there were 3 distinct sets of dot marks on the tape.

I'm going to buy a tape cleaner today, I've never cleaned the heads on my camera. I hope thats all it is!

The problem with dirty heads is you don't know they are bad until it's too late! Luckily I was able to edit around the dropouts! Phew!

It seems in this case, DV mode is more fragile than HDV, for some strange reason because the old tape I experimented on still plays back fine, despite the nicks!

Just a quick update:

The camera seems to be fine now that I've run a head cleaner through it. I ran 4 10-second cycles (the max recommended amount) since I had had never cleaned the tape head in 170+ hrs.

I have since shot a wedding last Saturday and captured about 2.5hrs of footage with no dropouts or tape abrasions. It seems like everything is fine now.

Also, the updated firmware has again eliminated the split clip problems.

I just wanted to post an update because I feel the HD100's get a bad rap for reliability, while in my case, it was just dirty tape heads.