Lost Video Help!
 

I'VE REPOSTED THIS QUESTION HERE FROM THE OPEN DV DISCUSSION FORUM:
I've got a problem: Using a Canon ELURA 100 miniDV camcorder, I recorded in-car footage from a race this past weekend, and got some pretty good stuff - seven miniDV tapes worth (it was an endurance race). I started reviewing all the footage and the last tape of the day won't play footage that I know was recorded.

I know that the video recorded correctly, because we reviewed it at the track in-camera and saw nearly 90 minutes of footage. But now when I try to play back what should be an entire tape full of content, there's only about 01:30:00 worth of footage before the camera appears to lose sync (am I using the right term here?). The 0h00m00s00f counter goes blank (it looks like this: --:--:--:--) about 0h01m30s into it, and no frame counts pick up anywhere else along the tape.

Has anyone ever experienced this? Knowing that there's footage there (I saw it during the first playback!), is there some way to get it to play?

I've tried playback in both the Canon ELURA 100 it was recorded on as well as a Panasonic PV-GS300 camcorder with the same result - the sync drops out at the same spot.

FYI - It was really HOT (95deg) and HUMID when the tape was recorded and then previewed successfully. When reviewed later, it was in the comfort of A/C... I was using LP mode to try and capture 14 hours of footage with as little tape as possible).

Help!

my experience...
 

I am not sure if this is related with your problem but I'd like to share. We were shooting a student short film and after all the shooting was completed we rewinded the tape and watched the important parts of the shooting on the camcorder's lcd. We were very happy with the results. Then I got home and tried to capture the footage to the computer. No luck. I went to another friend's house and we tried to capture the tape with his camcorder to his computer. Again no luck. I brought the camcorder to the technician and he said the tape mechanism ruined the tape when we were playing back. We lost one hour of footage unfortunatelly. I hope this is not your case, but I experienced this. Again, I hope you can save your footage. I wish you good luck

I'm still investigating the problem... I took it to a local production house here in Atlanta, and unfortunately no luck. We played the tape on 5 different professional decks and were only able to see the footage I'm able to see in the camcorder. And then nothing. The next thing I'm going to try is to heat soak the camera to the same TEMP and HUMIDITY conditions it saw when it was recorded. Maybe it was a head alignment thing...

Good luck with your student film!

If it was a head alignment problem, the camera that shot it should play it back. When you fast forward it on another deck, you should see the pictures but they'll be rolling with horizontal trash, though you can tell there's an image. So I doubt it's a head alignment thing. My first thought was if you watched the tape on location without pushing the record protect slider over, then maybe the record button got pressed after you rewound most of the tape and it all got recorded over. But if that happened, then you'd see time code going by. Did you try fast forwarding a few minutes into the tape? If there's tape damage near the head, maybe you can skip over that part and see if the rest plays. You'll have to do that probably with the ff button, not the shuttle. Most professional decks would stop where the time code does, but if they did the FF, they could skip over that part and move on down into the tape farther to see if anything's there.

Hey Craig.

Unfortunately, this is not a solution to your problem. Like Burak, I am in your boat.

I shot a wedding a few weeks ago, and played the tape back with the interviews of the groom. The camera we were shooting with has playback issues. ie - the audio drops when we playback, but it records it fine. The audio is all there when we capture and edit.

I was concerned, so I played it back several times. The audio was all there, and I moved on to the bride's interview and pre-wedding stuff.

Today, we are cutting the wedding, and the rest of the tape is blank!!! It's blank, and I don't know what to do. Like you, I remember shooting it. I remember it clearly!!!

I'm not sure about what happened, and it's my suspicion that the footage is still there. I'm going to see if I can dissect my tape right now...well, after I do a bit of research. If I have good news, I'll let you know.

Jeromy

no luck.... I didn't get the tape apart. Probably was a goose chase anyway.

Playing back tape shot in LP mode with a different camera can be problematic. Best bet would probably be to try and locate another camera that's the same make and model that you shot with.