Cleaning cassete e timecode lost
 

Hi, My wonderful pd170 has 3x10h of recording. Saturday during a wedding I pressed the rec button and the display say "cleaning cassete!". I think "it's too early" this cam has only 5 months!!!
So I turn off the cam, and the rec button work, in the footage I've only a bad frame with artifacts but before and aafter the image is ok!

Yesterday during another weeding the same think with another tape. but this time the cleaning messagge was very short, then disappear immediately. I continue shooting and I saw but I saw the timecode restarting. Uhmm...I paid attention to the timecode and for another 4 time during this wedding the counter restart. When the timecode restart I see in video horizzontal lines like a drop frames, then always normal.

What happen? I don't want use cleaning cassette so early, I now its use is "abrasive" for head. Any suggest?

Use the head cleaning tape with no concerns, you're quite safe. Sony even supply one with the FX1 now Marco.

And stick to one brand of tape, y'hear?

tom.

For my 170 I use always and only fuji cassette, never used other brand! And I never use this camera for capture or for rewind...For this reason I don't understand why the camera has the heading dirty so early!

For example with my old mx500 I used a lot different brand of tape for 2 years and never I need to clean head!Is the 170 so fragile?!?

It's not a fragile camera by any stretch of the imagination. I have a MX300 and that just looks so delicate alongside the 170. You've just been unlucky, that's all. Remember that you've paid $3 for a very complex assortment of bits and pieces - a Mini DV tape. You can't expect ALL of them to be 100% when you pay so little, and you've hit on one with some sort of gunk on the tape surface by the sound of it.

When Sony tested the 150's tape deck mechanism in the pre-production stage they put literally thousands of hours of tape through hundreds of machines. Now I'll leave you to guess what tape they used - and I can tell you it wasn't Fuji or Maxell.

tom.

ok thanks for reply...
Ok I was worry because I thinked ther's could be an head malfunction...I'l clean the head and hope this solve...

I have a second hand PD150, its been dropped onto concrete, its had a load of hour use, i've mixed tapes... its still 99.99% perfect. I get the occasional dropout (lasting next to no time) when reusing tapes, but i've not noticed any problems on new tapes. Its a tough beast, there's very much a reason they took em out to iraq. Probably built out of old tanks!

I hope the mine will be solid as yours, I don't have clean the head. I want to see if the problem persist, if happens for the third time...I'lll clean the head...but, I don't know way, this make me feel so sad...maybe because I suspect my 170 could has head problems in future...

Nah, unless it has had a failure in that area (very unlikely) the 170 is good for 1500 to 2000 hours of head rotation before it will require replacement. Of course that is an expectation based on using Sony tapes. 3rd party tapes are an unknown.