Wedding Video HORROR!
 

Just shot a video for a full wedding event last Saturday with my XM2.
When I came home and tried to rewind the tapes, a message says "eject tape" after about 5 seconds of rewinding, i put the tape back and the same thing occur, after the third time, i tried taki ng out the tape and to my horror my XM2, ate the tape and how long portion of the tape was crumpled up!.....

I used new tapes by panasonic....

any one had this expereince?????

ys

No, I've never had this problem. I think your cam has a head problem which needs to be looked at (and fixed) by Canon, unless the Pana tape is substandard.

You might be able to salvage the un-crumpled part of the tape, but don't put it back into the XM2 until it's been professionally serviced.

The most "saddening" thing is my camera has been to the service centre for the third time in less than a year, and everytime is due to head problem... and the warrenty is over soon, my fear is it may happen again after the warrenty period... and the repair will cost be a bomb.......

ys

Ah man... I really feel for you. It's a nightmare situation for anybody filming one off events. I hope you can recover the important stuff. The only thing I can remember happening to me is when I was filming the signing of the register, I thought I was recording when I was not and visa versa for about five minutes. It was not until I got home I realised the mistake so I am very cautious now.

But problems with the camera sometimes cannot be identified during the filming process.

What do others do when filming weddings as far as checking that you have everything recording ok? I cannot really stop half way through to check because I then muck the timecode up? Thoughts?

Ta

Steven

I have also been getting all too frequent remove the cassette or eject messages on my GL2. I rewound the tape on my other cam and put it back into the GL2 and it was then fine. It could be that the cannon is too sensetive to tape tension issues. I am not really sure though.

The best way to make sure you get everyting is to shoot with a minimum of 2 cameras. It is more unlikely to have 2 cameras go bad at the same time, and if one does you always have footage from the second camera to fall back on.

I recently did a wedding show here in Hampshire UK and we were one of two videography companies exhibiting. Although people did not mind paying extra for quality etc, they did mind about having two camera's following them around all day. They thought it would be like the BBC on their special day.

I see two arguments to the story and I see a benefit of having two camera's but I feel I can still produce good enough results using one camera. Although I do run around like a blue ass-fly all day. Maybe the argument is different across the other side of the pond.

Many thanks

Steve

Steven, the two camera's are really just for the ceremony.

For the ceremony, I like to have a stationary camera at or behind the alter (hidden if possible), to get the faces and vows without a lot of movement. Then I man the second and get the opposite angle (out of the other cameras frame) of the couple coming back down the isle. You just can't time that with one camera. Plus you have the added benefit of having the complete vows in one take with the addition of crowd reaction shots to intercut. It looks good in the final cut.

"Remove the Cassette". Twice now within 3 tapes. But it has now gone away . . hmmm .. I'm coming up to a year's worth with this cammie . .. maybe 100 miniDV tapes PLUS capture timings to through VEGAS. Okay some milage . . . this is worrying as I've got a shoot this Saturday . . . hmmm...

Grazie

How do you fix a tape that has been "eaten" by the cam? Just last week, my hi-8 cam had an error and forced the tape out, and some of the tape was hanging out of the cam. Now I have reason to believe the tape has been twisted 180 degrees, and after winding it by "manually" rewinding the tape back into the cassette, I don't know how to fix it. Should I take it apart w/ a screwdriver?

Also, how do I fix my camera from having these problems? It's about 5 or so years old now and I don't remember if it has ever had a head cleaning.

The best way to fix it is to cut out the twisted pard and splice it back together. IF you put it through a camera the way it is now is a 50/50 chance that it will get caught again. Once you have it spliced, make a dub of it right away and use the dub to edit with.

IF there is a very long section of tape that you think is twisted then you will probably have to take it apart and unthread the tape to see if it is twisted, then rewind it again.

Best NOT to run a splice over the heads, it could do major damage. MiniDV is not like the old 1/4" audio tape.

This has happened with my little Canon MV550i. After thoroughly searching for a reason I believe it to be a result of using different brands of tape. In my case, I was using Sony tapes exclusively and then I switched to TDK. The rewind issue started immediately. I thought it was the TDK tapes, so I went back to Sony and guess what, the rewind problem was still there.

There is a thread elsewhere on this forum about tapes. One contributer suggested that Sony tapes use a liquid lubricant and most other manufacturers use a dry lubricant. The poster suggests that when these two lubricants are mixed, a sludge forms on the heads which interferes with correct operation of the mechanism.

If this is the case, then the best recourse is to have the camera cleaned by Canon. The probability is that normal tape head cleaners won't do any good (I know the Panasonic one doesn't) since each manufacturer's cleaner is designed against their own tape.

Yow: I'd be very interested in hearing whether you used Sony tapes prior to the Panasonic ones.