I read about this many times on the forum, but it is the first time I have the situation myself: tapes recorded in Canon cameras may not play properly in Sony cameras.

I shot a miniDV tape a few years ago on a friend's Canon GL2, and yesterday I captured the tape using a Sony Z1U into PremPro CS3. The picture is 100%perfect, but the audio is intermittent, with about 20% missing, mostly on higher volume sections.

Is this the typical manifestation of the said incompatibility?

Thanks,

My personal experience with this was because the Canon needed a head alignment. When my tapes were played back in the original GL-2, they were fine. I'd suggest capturing using the same camera. Then, get it serviced...

I record on an XL1s and play on a Sony DSR-11 deck and Sony TRV-11 camera all the time. Once I had a JVC deck and it would not play my XL1s tapes. I had a technician look at it and the XL1s tapes were out of spec. The tapes played fine in my TRV-900. It comes down to how well the playback unit handles errors. The Sony error correction was superior.

That said, I am dealing with equipment in the same era. You aren't. If you haven't had the GL2 serviced in the past 2 years, that would be the first step. It should improve if not cure it. It will also hold off the appearance of the dreaded "EJECT TAPE" demon that inhabits old cameras.

Guys, thanks for the replies.

However, that's NOT my question. I know all about it - tape mechanism alignment differences are a common cause for many issues (as an electronics technician I have a fairly solid background in tape-based electronic devices).

My question was, is audio drop-out the problem others have seen when playing Canon-recorded tapes in Sony camcorders?

Since video is 100% perfect and from what little I know, audio is interleaved between 'video chunks'... it would make sense to think that where audio drops out, video should drop out as well, or the other way around, if video is perfect, audio should not suffer either.

THIS is my dilemma. Should I post a sample? I thought it's not necessarry, the audio simply goes to silence intermittently.

Sorry. Yes. When I experienced compatibility problems between Canon and JVC, it was in the form of intermittent audio dropouts or stuttering. Clearing the cobwebs, I recall an old consumer Canon camcorder whose tapes would not playback on my Sony.