I have just had an interesting experience with my GS 400 camera which works
fine except that if you take out the tape and insert a new recording on a
Panasonic DVC 30 or DV100A, and then play it back on the GS 400, the
timecode sits at zero during the playback of this new recording. If you then
record over this, starting say anywhere within this section on the GS 400,
it picks up a correct time code as if it had been read correctly all the
time !

Naturally Panasonic don't seem to want to know about it. But it is a real
problem if I wish to download from a tape recorded in one of these
professiopnal machines. Incidentally with the tape played back on a Sony
VX2100 all is OK.

Another GS/Panasonic problem seems to be very poor overload performance on the mic inputs. The mic inputs distort above 23 millivolts at the mic
socket regardless of whether you use manual or auto control. Perhaps next
time anyone is doing a camera test you might care to measure this parameter as I have found that in practice, with a good mic, in live music recordings loud parts can distort particularly if, say you were at a wedding and were near the band.

Apart from the above I am very pleased with this camera but hope they will
soon release a similar up-graded model.

Ron Cooper.

Panasonic probably thinks that you should not be using this camera if you are knowledgable enough to know how many millivolts will overload the mic input.

I haven't heard of that problem. What timecode are you putting on the proline tapes? As a work around, you can record 15 seconds of color bars at the beginning of your tapes, then bring the tapes into the GS400 and record color bars for 5 seconds or so to establish the timecode.

Well, the mic preamp is rated at -50 dB sensitivity. And, it is distorting even when audio level is adjusted down to -30 dB? What are you hitting it with? My RODE Videomic is quite hot but it can handle that. You probably should use an inline attenuator or XLR mixer/adapter.

Hi Ron,

I am shooting using JVC GY-DV5000 minidv camera and play back tape using nv-gs400 for a year now. It seems that the timecode does not sit at zero during the playback of this new recording on gs400.

Regards
Leigh