I shot 2 tapes for a friend on my A1 in HDV 1080 60i. He captured it on a new sony player recorder deck. Not sure what model, he bought it at NAB. He said that when he captured and played back my tape that their were times when the picture would freeze for a second but the time code was still going. This was happening on both of my tapes. I was using Sony Premium tapes. The tapes that he captured on his Z1 were fine. Is the problem that my camera is a Canon and his deck is a Sony? I am recording an hour of footage right now and will capture in FCP and see if this happens with the freezing. Only had the camera for a little over a month. Any thoughts on this matter would help me out.

Thanks Kent

Sounds to me like HDV dropouts. What happens if you play the tape in the camera?

Sounds to me like HDV dropouts. What happens if you play the tape in the camera?

Hey Jerome,

That is what I was thinking. Do you use HDV tapes or regular tapes? I am capturing right now of 1 hr of footage to see. I never really noticed it before. But then again I never really shot that much with the camera till now. I have read some place that is says that the heads might be dirty. I have been using all new tapes since I got the camera. Well, I'll see in a couple of hours.

Kent

Do you use HDV tapes or regular tapes?
I use standard Sony Premium tapes. I have used the Sony HDV tapes, but in reality, not worth the money unless you are shooting something REALLY important with ONE camera and want to minimize any dropouts.

I shoot weddings and use 2-3 cameras so if there is a dropout, I can cut to another angle. I've seen very few dropouts (1-2 per hour) with the A1, but my HC1 saw as many as 4-5 per hour.

Don't clean the heads too often or you'll damage them.

It seems to me the thing to do is play back the tapes on your camera and see if the problem happens. If not, that would rule out any problem with the camera and tape. If it doesn't play properly on your camera, it could be a head clog or dropout issue.

it's dropout. iv'e experienced it a few times and i have been using sony hdv tapes. nothing really huge, like 1 second every 10 hours of shooting. i'm going to use sony excellence on my next shoot and see what happens.

If the problem happens on your XHA1 then I would agree it is probably drop out. If it only occurs on the Sony deck then it is probably poor alignment on the XHA1. This would result in the tapes working on the Canon but not as well on the Sony.