Have you ever lost wedding footage? I just recently lost about 15mins of footage on a sony minidv tape, filming with Canon XH-A1. Was it the tape or the camera, cause all of a sudden the picture came back on the tape pixelly and then everything was working again.
thoughts? it just sucks!

Oh yeah - my first wedding. The footage from my second cam was totally unusable. To make matters worse, I did not shoot non-stop during the ceremony with camera 1 because I was counting on footage from camera 2 to fill in the gaps.

The couple basically got a "highlight" version of the ceremony. Nobody complained and I got many compliments, but I knew better.

Just predictable suggestions really - try playing the tape back on some other cameras or decks. Once you have captured all that you are able to from the tape, you might like to try to record on the affected part of the tape on another camera to get a definite answer to whether the tape was to blame.

As for losing footage, while playing the organ at a wedding I witnessed a videographer missing almost the entire ceremony because his camera was off. I asked the minister if he was up for running a take 2 on the ceremony - no problem. The poor videographer drew the short straw and he had to ask the bride and groom if they would mind staying on a bit and doing it all again. I think it all worked out in the end.

Andy,
I'm very happy to say that I have lost footage from a wedding. Whew!

Chris, this is why I always say "shoot as if the other cameras aren't running". Your story proved my point. Once the processional music starts my A camera is not shut off until the recessional has past by. You just never know what's going to happen to either the people or the gear. Batterys die, tapes can jam, shots get blocked but that's the chance we take when we run an unmanned camera. Hey I run one too and sometimes I get as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs until I see the footage.

Colin, I sit here in wonderment when you say the guy didn't realize the camera was off. Was it off or did he forget to hit the record button?
If it was off, shame shame. How can one not know the camera is off. If he forgot to hit record, shame shame. The letters REC is flashing in the VF or LCD in RED on most cameras (or some variant of that). Every camera I've used in the last 26 years has had some sort of warning that the camera was recording. He's very lucky to have had a couple that was willing to do a take 2.
I'm sorry but to me that's inexcusable.

The poor videographer

The 'poor videographer' should have bent down and kissed your feet. Can you imagine if you hadn't helped him out and he had gone home with no footage? Now THAT's a short straw!

Hi Andy

My buddy here did his first wedding last Saturday and decide to move his one and only camera to a new vantage point during the ceremony. He thought he had hit the record button to pause the tape but in fact hadn't!!! In the new position (a few seconds later) he did hit the record button to start the tape rolling again (but, of course, it then went to pause) He lost the entire ceremony!!!!! Dunno how he felt but even I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach!!!

I think it's really easy, in the heat of the moment, to double press the record button and that puts the camera back to pause which is a disaster!! I guess the only really good advice is to monitor everything!! Watch the EVF/LCD and make sure that the tape is actually rolling!!! My HMC's have two tally lights..one in the front for the talent and one at the back for the operator..that's brilliant for me cos I can simply glance at my static camera and see that it's running!!

Don is also right...use all your cams to record footage..I have my B-Cam on my shoulder at all times and if the A-Cam suddenly failed/got bumped/blocked, I can take over instantly!!

Guess this is one advantage of multicam shoots???

Chris

Don, he said later that the battery had failed. I was not particularly watching him, but I remember vaguely wondering whether there should have been a red LED on his camera. Then I saw him suddenly realise that the camera was not running and he turned various ghastly colours in quick succession. As soon as I had finished the bridal march I asked him if I was right in thinking that he had missed the ceremony, and when he confirmed this I felt I had to help if possible. I still don't understand why he wasn't monitoring the camera even though it was locked down. On this list we are fairly hard on folks who don't monitor their audio then find a problem afterwards, but not monitoring the video is very hard to understand. It's just as well he filmed weddings rather than flew airliners for a living!

When I saw the title "Losing Footage", I cringed. I have two recurring nightmares, 1) Being hit by a train, 2) Forgetting to show up at a wedding. And if there was to be a third nightmare it would be losing the footage. Thankfully, that's never happened to me. But what a scary thought.

Hmmm the old "battery failed" thing huh? lol.

I guess my next question then would have to be "why use a battery that may or may not be charged fully or use a small capacity battery on any camera unless it' an emergency battery in an emergency situation.
I'm sorry to sound so harsh but to me it's inexcuseable. First make sure all the gear that's going to be used is properly and fully charged, has fresh battery's in audio gear, etc etc.
It's just hard for me to be forgiving in cases like this.

Chris, why did he stop recording to move the camera? To me, it's much easier to hit the button and just let it go regardless. Your audio isn't broken, your TC stays so if shooting multiple cams it's easier to sync for editing and you never run the risk of making the mistake your friend did.

I reviewed the footage and when I rewind the tape I can see the video but it is all pixelated, so it was recording but you cant tell oh is in the picture. I went and recorded over 10sec of it and it recorded just fine on the tape. Should my xha1 tell me when the heads need cleaning?

I had a Canon GL2 which pixellated. On the left hand side of the frame. Not always, just every now & then. A head cleaning tape worked a bit, but after a while I sent it back to Canon. They basically fixed the 'Drive Gear Assembly, and Idler Gear Assembly' on mine at least.


As for losing footage, I've only shot a few but I don't stop recording during the ceremony, and I save & pre-label a single tape for the ceremony & the ceremony only. No matter how much room was left on the tape I ejected it as soon as it was over.

A videographer I have worked with on many occasions had at his first wedding ( not paid mind you, just for friends as a demo) he shot the entire ceremony with a nervous feeling that the audio was not recording clean. He could see the monitors but didn't have his headphones so he was nervous the entire shoot.
as soon as it was over he quickly rewound the tape 15 mins or so and had a good look and listen. everything was great. relieved he went on to tape the reception and was so excited to have a wedding under his belt... until he got home and saw the footage and realized he never advanced the tape again after he rewound it and taped over the 2nd half of the ceremony!
The couple got a wedding video of mostly photos to music etc and they were still thrilled cause it was more than they had budgeted for anyways.
hard lesson learned eh?

Hi Don

He's a newcomer at this and probably was in a panic!! A photographer moving to video as competition here for photogs is huge!!!

That's the problem with just one cam on a tripod..if I need a new angle the 2nd cam does the job and even if the main cam is blocked you still get the audio continuous!!

Come to think of it I DID have a disaster during the speeches (and my buddy ALSO messed up the speeches as he ran out of tape) My battery went flat during a speech !!! After that (many years ago) I always made sure that before the speeches start the cam has a new battery AND a new tape...nowdays if there is less than 60 mins on the main cam's SDHC card before speeches, a new card goes in..(and a fresh battery)

Andy's problem sounds like a head clog issue OR a faulty drive train. When I was still running tape I replaced cameras every 24 months, regardless!! That way you have new cameras and can get a reasonably return selling your old ones. I must admit I never had a drive problem (as the cams were always fairly new) and never a head problem as I always used pro tapes, brand new and used only once!!

Weddings cannot be repeated so we need to take every precaution possible. My friend now is trying to get the bride to do a repeat "staged" ceremony but I don't think he realises that it's more than just putting on her wedding dress!!!

Chris

Wow this thread is making me cringe... I just had a mini freak out and had to go back and check all the footage from the wedding I shot on the weekend!

A few years back, I taped an outside wedding with two wireless mics. The receivers both came out as static. Luckily I had a Rode NTG-2 on my third camera, plus I was recording to two external recorders - one through the sound system, and one on the officiant. That was probably my biggest panic moment. In between the back-ups, I was able to still get some good audio. The lesson I taught myself then is to always have backups for your backups!

Hi John

I must admit that I do skim thru my footage after the bride has made her grand entrance at the reception as there is a gap while everyone eats. Of course, it's a totally worthless exercise cos IF you found a problem with the footage at the ceremony, there is precious little you can do about it!! I guess one could also feed video out to a laptop or Firestor drive and have secondary audio but that's probably going overboard!!

Guess it's nice to know that everything is on track!! The only sane thing to do before a wedding is to make sure that you have double of everything so if there is any failure then you can replace the offending item.


Chris

What you do about messed up footage depends a lot on whether you had just one camera running at the time. If you had another camera or two (or three) you may be able to patch around the problem area.

Is there usable audio with the pixellated footage or is the audio garbled as well?

I've had several instances of pixelated, messed up footage over the years I've been shooting weddings. If I got usable audio, a head cleaning seemed to fix the problem. Sometimes it was just time for repair work. Fortunately, I've almost always had something else to cut to or been able to cut around the damaged footage.

Some years ago, a Sony TRV900 started pixelating intermittently. The audio was also very glitchy. The problem turned out to be worn and somewhat misaligned heads. I was using it as a B-roll cam, so I had my main cam and a couple of others to cut to.

When I had a similar problem with a Sony VX2000, the audio was not too bad and a cleaning tape seemed to fix the issue. At least it never recurred after I ran the cleaning tape.

Were you shooting in HD or SD when you got the pixellation with your XH-A1? I had some pixelation with an XH-A1 the last time I shot a wedding in standard definition. It was a ceremony we had hurriedly moved indoors as a thunderstorm spilled over the mountains. The pixellation occurred during the early part of the ceremony. I had stepped away to re-aim one of the other cameras so I don't know if the pixellation would have been visible on the screen. I only found it later during editing. I ran a cleaning tape, and the problem has not recurred. I later re-usued the tape when just shooting random stuff and didn't have any problems with it.

If you've got other footage, you may be able to do some creative editing. There have been several times when I resorted to tricks like slow motion footage during processions and slowing down some of the zooms from my main camera.

Losing footage is the stuff of paranoia and nightmares, but it happena to everybody. One time, during a processional for a large outdoor wedding, one of the photographers knocked my B cam into a bush, and I didn't see it pointing skyward until several minutes later. I've also done a couple of large weddings where guests had put up their own cams on tripods and tried to run them with hand-held remote controls, and thereby managed to shut off some of my cameras. And, there was the time where a Sony battery just seemed to quit during a ceremony. On charging the battery later, it reported being fully charged but would only run a camera for about 15 minutes.

And then there was the time that the little ring bearer decided to explore my kit when I was shooting the cake cutting. He walked off with two of the mini-DV tapes from the ceremony. I didn't find out for a couple of days. All I knew was that the tapes weren't where I thought I'd locked them up. Since I'd shot that ceremony with five cams, I had enough to other footage to make a rough cut for the bride and groom to look it. But I was very, very very relieved when the couple called about finding the tapes.

Let me clarify something I said earlier. I said I never had a problem with footage. That's not true. I've never had a problem with footage that I couldn't cut around. IOW, I could either go to my B cam or was just simply able to cut the footage completely.
It does to everyone at some point. Someone once said that there are only 2 kind of video camerpeople. Those that it's happened to and those that it will happen to. What it is...heh, something that we din't need or want to happen when it happens since it always happens at the wrong time.

Hey Jay, forgive me for asking but why do you keep used tapes in your bag. Man that's asking for trouble. Bags get stolen all the time. East coast is big on that but it happens everywhere. Hotel, venue staff or "friends" uninvited "guests"-little kids.

I have never left my tapes anywhere but on me especially since I switched to mini tapes anout 12 years or so ago. That way if someone steals my gear, well I'd hate it but it's insured. My tapes are what I get paid for. Without them I give refunds, so they can have the tapes when they pry them out of my cold dead hands.

Don --

I didn't mean to suggest that you had problems cutting around anything. I only meant to describe how lucky I had been on the occasions when I had a camera glitch.

As for stashing things in my case, it depends on where the gig is.

Where I live and mostly work is in rural Montana. You just don't need to worry about theft. It really is a different environment here. I mean there are people in my town who haven't locked a door in 20 years, even when they left town for a couple of weeks. Some people here wouldn't be able to find their car keys if they didn't leave the keys in the ignition. (Leaving keys in the ignition is against state law, but there's so little auto theft here that people keep doing it, anyway.)

My "kit" is a wheeled hard case that I can lock when I need to. I just had not done so. The reason I put "used" tapes in the case is to keep them separate from the fresh tapes I carry with me. That keeps me from accidentally inserting one in place of a fresh tape thereby avoiding another occasion for losing footage.

On the other hand, when I do gigs in one of our large cities like Billings or Great Falls --- don't laugh too hard, they are large cities by our standards --- I am considerably more protective of my stuff.

When I saw the title "Losing Footage", I cringed. I have two recurring nightmares, 1) Being hit by a train, 2) Forgetting to show up at a wedding. And if there was to be a third nightmare it would be losing the footage. Thankfully, that's never happened to me. But what a scary thought.

Mine include forgetting to bring cameras and lenses to the wedding...


I have lost wedding footage before, but I have never had a critical failure, I always have other cameras that are recording so if anything ever happens I can go back....

Although I have lost footage from repeatable shoots before.

Hi Louis

I must admit I don't have the train bit, but, not showing up must be awful!! I always plan to get to the venue at least an hour earlier (so I sit around twiddling my thumbs a lot of the time) The early arrival is to make sure that I cover issues like heavy traffic, a flat tyre etc etc but I must admit I have often thought about being pulled over and refused to be allowed to continue by law enforcement!! Some can be pretty stubborn!! It's never happened, of course, but if it did, one could be in quite a predicament!!!!

The way I look at things now is that I make sure I have backups for everything, check the vehicle, leave early and do my best to cover all bases. If something out of my hands happens then there would have been nothing I could have done about it anyway!!

I used to stress big time during the ceremony but soon learnt that it doesn't help!!! If you gear is going to die then there is precious little you can do!!

Chris

Heh, Chris....we are made from the same mould.
If the ceremony starts starts at 3 and I'm not doing prep, then I know I should be at the church by 2---but I'm always there by 1:30-ah just like the army. Hurry up and wait but for me if I'm not 30 minutes early, then I'm late.

I once got a police escort to a wedding. Lights and siren! I had done this cops wedding about 6 months earlier. He used to patrol my area. One saturday he saw me leaving in my car, stopped me, we talked a minute then I told him I had to go. He asked where, I told him, he said "follow me"-the church was only a few minutes away very close to my house but he fired up the lights and siren ahd escorted me there. It was very cool and we laughed about it when we got to the church and the florist was there with a very puzzled look on her face.
Anyway, I got a corp job friday so I'd better start getting ready now, don't want to be late ;-)

Hi Louis

I must admit I don't have the train bit, but, not showing up must be awful!! I always plan to get to the venue at least an hour earlier (so I sit around twiddling my thumbs a lot of the time) The early arrival is to make sure that I cover issues like heavy traffic, a flat tyre etc etc but I must admit I have often thought about being pulled over and refused to be allowed to continue by law enforcement!! Some can be pretty stubborn!! It's never happened, of course, but if it did, one could be in quite a predicament!!!!

The way I look at things now is that I make sure I have backups for everything, check the vehicle, leave early and do my best to cover all bases. If something out of my hands happens then there would have been nothing I could have done about it anyway!!

I used to stress big time during the ceremony but soon learnt that it doesn't help!!! If you gear is going to die then there is precious little you can do!!

Chris


I'm the same way.. I always make sure I have a back up to a back up and bring enough lenses with me to shoot a feature film (the one I have coming up i'm bringing 3 bodies but 17 lenses some of which are back-up like if I have a 50 1.2 L I also have the 50 1.4 just incase. ) but the dream still remains that I am there and have nothing to shoot with.

I haven't lost photage, but last year I forgot to turn on the external mic and I was solo and no second camera (bad bad bad!).... I realized 4 minutes later.... It was during a traditional dance thata group of groom's friends had organised right after dinner... luckily, they had played a tarck rather than dancing to live music.....

I've done the same thing. Got caught unawares as the dance started, so I didn't get the earphones on right away, and thus didn't realize I had knocked down the audio level on my XLR adapter. I've also muted the audio by tipping the line-mike switch to "line" level, but fortunately I was running two cameras and could pull acceptable audio off the other one.

That said, I've found getting a "track" is often a good thing even if you don't need it to fill gaps. You lay the track beneath your camera audio (to be sure it syncs correctly). You fade it up and fade down the room audio to limit room noise through the most of the dance. As you get to the end of the dance (or dance sequence), you fade up room audio again. Room noise can be very distracting and doing this makes for pleasanter viewing by the couple.

I'm sorry to sound so harsh but to me it's inexcuseable. First make sure all the gear that's going to be used is properly and fully charged, has fresh battery's in audio gear, etc etc.
It's just hard for me to be forgiving in cases like this.

I don't know Don, I've had a battery read out that it was fully charged only to die about 10 minutes in and had a set of rechargeable AA's die prematurely in a wireless mic before the vows. In both cases they were batteries that seemed to be fully charged. Technical problems happen.

1) just buy fresh AA's for every shoot.
2) always keep a spare battery in your pocket during a ceremony.

Speaking of being on time, I have a good one for you that happened to me today.

I had a 6:00 wedding in the French Quarter, planned on being there by 5 but knew there was a festival going on down there today so I left early. Pulled into the Quarter about 4:10 and didn't find a parking spot till 5:15. I wish I was kidding. To say I was freaking out just a little would be an understatement. I was about to the point of parking it next to a cop, getting out with my gear and tossing him the keys.

Eathan,
I have also had batterys lose a cell and while it shows fully charged it is only good for a few minutes and yeah, I've had dry cells for audio gear blow up too, but the way I read the OP this person was not at all prepared to do the job and frankly I've read too many things by people who were not prepared to do whatever the job is and honestly THAT hurts all of us in one way or another and that's why I got a bit harsh with my response.

We've all suffered equipment malfunctions at one time or another but this one sounded to me like operatot malfunction.

I think Don is talking about the third posting rather than the OP, but it is all the stuff of nightmares.

The OP was about a section of tape that was pixellated and unusable. That kind of scare is why we haul around all that equipment.

The third posting was about somebody who was helping with another camera and simply never noticed his camera was not running. I mean, its bad enough when when we mess up on our own, but it gets really scary when you are hiring somebody to take a load off your own shoulders and then they turn out to be a whole additional set of worries. Gets to be too much to keep track of.

As for Ethan's comments:

About Batteries: Everybody is going to have that problem at some point. Over sixteen years, I've had two of them. One with a relatively new Sony NPF750 and once before that with an not-so-new but always reliable NPF550. I think that kind of thing is one of the reasons to use muti-camera set-ups and why we always shoot as if the camera to hand was the only one running.

About arriving late to gigs: there's no protection. Last summer, I left extra early for a gig knowing that the main roadway was blocked by construction. Then the detour route was blocked by a broken water main. Another route was blocked because an excavation contractor punched into a natural gas main. It took some creative wandering to get through in time to set-up and look calm.

try Sony Media Services (http://www.sonymediaservices.com/) these guys solved a single camera father/daughter dance issue for me a few years ago. Amazing, and it only cost like $45... Good luck.
Bill

Hey everyone.

I thought the tape was a fresh one when I went to the next event. Horrid.

Guess its just my luck but I for the first time acidentally erased over some footage from an event on my b roll camera. Good thing I had 2 other cameras going basically the whole event otherwise it would really suck.

As it is it looks like I lost the part where the couple is having their pictures taken but that's about it as far as I know so far.


Solution:
ALWAYS lock your tapes when you pull them out.
Always mark them ASAP with the date.
ALWAYS run more then one camera.

I plan to give the couple a discount, throw in photos from the photographer for the part thats gone, and call it an experience.

I've done this a few times.

1. The footage had stayed on my hard drive for a few months and the first half of the wedding was deleted.
(How to prevent this?) Back up to more than one HD. I had to give 50% of my fee back.

2. During the ceremony I did it with all one take from when the bride got the the alter to just before the kiss.
FCP locked up during the transfer of that long take. I looked at all the files and saw it was their so I assumed it had completely transferred over but it did not. I had to give 50% of my fee back. (How to prevent?) Allow FCP to transfer while you go make coffee or have dinner. Make sure all the clips have a "thumbnail". Edit the video. Then delete the footage.

3. Outdoor wedding. Wind was very loud and I was nowhere near the speakers. We did a mic check just moments before the ceremony started, not kidding, like 2 minutes. I didn't notice but the pastor turned off his mic and forgot to turn it on before the ceremony. My second videographer didn't turn on this mic on his 7D and the H4N was hooked up to the sound system that we weren't' able to monitor. Luckily I had my mic on and captured the sound.

4. My footage on my 7D for the B&G introduction / first dance disappeared. Luckily my other videographer Kevin who in training, was recording the event with another camera and saved my ass.

I haven't had a problem since. I make sure my audio is covered from head to toe and two cameras are running during the special moments, even if they paid for one camera. At least I have that safety net.

I deleted a partition (not formated) on a 500gb external HDD.... wanted to get the data back didn't have enought storage space to copy. So went and bought a 1TB HDD while installing it, I stuffed up another HDD. (I HATE SATA PORTS). While trying to fix it, I broke a pin. Hence lost all footage for the wedding I was working on. Now the problem is not with footage because I have them all on tape but I had deshaken certain clips and now, I basically have to redo the whole thing again.

It will cost me several hundred dollars to get the data recovered, since I have all the project files in another drive, I just have to transfer the footage, use the same file names but the hard part is getting the right clips to deshake. That'll be painful.

Anyways, I am seriously thinking of RAID now.

I fixed my HDD when I thought there was no hope left.

If you ever broke a SATA pin or the plastic L-shape thing from the power or data connection... just before giving up try one of those SATA power + data cables.
http://www.pccasegear.com/images/rc5055sata.jpg

Because it has both connection joined together it holds the them even if the L-shape part is broken.

I was seriously not hoping that it will work but I am glad I tried it anyway. Right now I am copying all the data from the faulty disk to my new 1tb HDD. I think I will still keep the faulty disk and install new version of Fedora to play with... but do I want to take the risk with a faulty disk... guess not... they are pretty cheap nowadays anyway... and I am running low on SATA connections.

Anyways... I am very glad I sorted out my problem. There is nothing scarier than losing data that hasn't been backed up.

Solution:ALWAYS lock your tapes when you pull them out.

This is most important in my book. I'm surprised at how many videographers I know don't do this. Why take the chance of recording over something? And I never rewind the tape until I'm just about to capture it. These $2 tapes turn into $500 tapes very quickly.