Any idea what's causing this audio problem?

[Lalo Alvidrez]

Getting this throughout the video, does anyone know what might be causing it? I had another camera patched into a soundboard and was still getting audio problems. Plus the pixelation on the video as well. Thought it might be a bad batch of video tapes.

[Richard Crowley]

We can't even begin to guess without the reference recording and the description of what equipment you were using and how it was connected.

[Lalo Alvidrez]

Untitled on Vimeo

Here is the link to a sample video of what's happening. Any ideas?

[Richard Crowley]

I heard stuttering audio dropouts. And I saw video compression and/or dropout artifacts that were synchronized with the audio hits. This is NOT just an "audio problem". This is a complete signal interruption problem (audio AND video).

Are you saying that you got the same artifacts from TWO DIFFERENT cameras? If that is the case, I would give some credence to the theory of bad tapes. Being tape,(a dying media), I presume that they are not "factory-fresh" but have been sitting around for a while.

Of course you (and ONLY you) can do the experiment with your camera (s) and tapes to see if you can reproduce the problem. It is always a good idea to fast-forward through the whole tape and rewind it just to "exercise" it and break up any possibility for being sticky.

[Lalo Alvidrez]

thanks richard, Actually I think those tapes have probably been sitting around. I purchased a pd170 and the fellow had the tapes for sale as well so I purchased a bunch of them. I'll test it with some new ones I have on hand.

[Bill Grant]

Lalo,
Also could be dirty heads. Especially on a PD170. If it's critical there's a company called Sony Media Services
Sony Media Services

That will repair tapes. They did for me over the years. I would work on getting a head cleaning.
Bill