Timecode Breaks
 

I bought the DVX100P last June and shot over 60 hours of footage for doc in July. I have been editing since then. nearly every tape has at least one timecode break, sometimes tapes have several breaks. Has anyone else encountered this problem.

jim

Did you black the tapes first?

all you need to do is when in the field remember to record yourself a handle... about 10 seconds before the action and 10 sec after the action before you stop shooting... it will save you a huge headache when you try to edit...

Goat

James,
Based on your Web site you are clearly no rookie to shooting; you've probably far more experience than most of us. So I'm imagining that the t.c. breaks you're encountering are probably not the result of the usual review/repositioning flubs that generally produce such complaints.

I've not had this problem so I can only toss out points that may factor into a cause. One point that comes to mind: are you manually setting or manipulating your time code with the DVX100?

I have never had to black an entire tape before recording either with Beta or DV, although I can see how that might solve the problem, but that doesn't explain what is causing it.

Time caode was set manually, hour 01:00:00:00, etc for each tape. Just like with a Betacam camera.

I deduced that three factors seemed to corespond with the breaks.

1. Do not rotate the scene file setting dial while in record mode.
2. Many of the breaks ocurred when the camera was powered down momentarily (powered down in order to save battery ife).
3.Some of the breaks seem to have ocurred when the camera was in pause mode between recording.
4. None of these scenarios (except 1.) are absolute, meaning that sometimes this seems to have caused the break, but sometimes it didn't.

I assume you're seeing the breaks on your NLE (which one?) during capture?

With a number of DV cams (early Panasonic EZ, DVX100, my old XL1, I've seen timecode breaks on non-blacked tapes that happened intermittently by variety of shooters.

I think it's just because the tape mechanism is not absolutely precise unless a signal is already there. Some high-end cams, especially old analog seemed to suffer less, but often you want to review footage etc. and leave gaps.

I never have the problem by blacking tapes, plus the rewind insures the tension is okay prevent dropouts etc. It does add wear if you black with the camera, but on important shoots, I always have since I started shooting video. For non-important stuff, I don't.

what works for me:
* hit the rec check button before shooting.
* hit the rewind button to manually bring the tape to the last (or before the last) TC after switching camera off and on again.
* make sure that the TC is set to regen.