What's causing this fault?
 

My Friends HD101 has an intermittent problem, can anyone recognise what causes it? Every 3-4 hours of shooting the "use head cleaner" message comes up, usually right in the middle of the shoot (he regularly cleans the head using an approved head cleaning tape) he then gets a huge drop out on the picture, lasting about 10-15 seconds, where he gets big thick bands of the previous image overlaid over the new shot. after 15 seconds, the glitch kind of dissolves away. He's taken the camera in for service but they could find no fault - probably because it only occurs intermittently. Recently he's also been seeing the glitch on recordings without the on screen message coming up. This has severely knocked his confidence in the camera as he shoots corporate presentations and has no opportunity for reshoots. Any ideas?

A couple of ideas

what tapes is being used ? some like the low end sony stuff are known to have problems consistantly. change tape stock for a better quality type

a protruding video head. this would be a video head that sticks out a little too much and is randomly gouging the tape when the tape tension gets a little too high. this would mean factory service to check head height and replace the head if its out of spec. there could also be some other tape path mechanical problems here too

something damaged in the tape path - pinch roller, loading posts.

is the camera, or has the camera been used in a very dusty environment ? perhaps just a good hand cleaning of the tape transport is all thats needed. I just did this with mine, but its a really pain to get at anything in the camera. I used forceps with alchohol pads, but it wasn't easy.

Hi Steve,
Thanks for the reply. He uses panasonic ay-dvm63amq tape (I suggested he use these when he first had the problem, but the problem persists). We were thinking it would be something to do with the heads, so I've suggested he sends the camera back and get it looked at again - unfortunately its out of warranty... he uses the camera in all kinds of environments, but I don't believe he would expose it to excess dust or moisture. Still, hopefully JVC can sort it out...

I'm not a fan of Panasonic tapes, even with the DVX100a cameras I shoot with. JVC's tapes are great, as are Sony's. If you switch, stick with that tape from here on out.

Also, before you switch tape brands, put the head cleaner tape in your camera and hit play for 10 seconds, then put the new brand in.

heath

I had the very same problem with those tapes as well. Thankfully it happened only once. I also switched to the Sony master HDV tapes after that and had no more problems.

Panasonic Tapes
 

I noticed when I switched to the Panasonic DVM63AMQ tapes that I am getting an enormous amount of drop out including audio drop as well. Panasonic says they never heard of this problem and I just had both of my camera's cleaned. I am at my wits end and am now looking to upgrade and just go tapeless and use a hard drive.

Any advise
Thanks
Domenic

What did you use before? Sony? JVC? Clean your heads with a tape head cleaner, then go back to that brand. Personally, I love the Sony tapes.

heath

Panasonic Tapes
 

I used the PQ's from Panasonic and was getting some drop outs but not as much as I get now with a better quality tape. One other note I also just had my camera serviced and cleaned prior to using the MQ's . It has become very frustrating to say the least. I can a good 10-15 frame drop in the tape here and there.