See this thread below----post five. It is not just me advising this. In addition, I have never read a manual that did not advise the owner to use a cleaning tape at regular intervals.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...light=cleaning

Thanks---Mike

after a full day of shooting and monitoring, it seems the stuttering issue is no longer present in the cam i'm using, regardless of whether the lcd is open or closed. after the camera exhibited some of yesterday's problematic behavior this morning, then running a couple of more tapes through it over the course of the day, the camera's playback has been trouble-free all afternoon and evening. i can only attribute the initial stuttering playback as a symptom of newcamera-itis. here's to hoping it stays that way. i'd be interested to hear how lorry's hv20 is doing.

ken, the cam was just purchased by my current employer, but i'm inclined to pick one up for myself after spending some time with it. it's quite a little camera.

Henry,

How much recording in total did you have to do before the problem went away? I had a stutter/dropout issue for about 10-15 minutes where the m2t files had out of synch audio or there were a few seconds missing where I don't remember playing pause. Funny thing was the extractor said 0 dropouts. I re-extracted in a different format and the out of synch audio went away but I was still missing a few seconds. I'm thinking of exchanging my unit for another to be sure but then I kinda feel attached to this particular one.

mike, my display issues disappeared after 2-3 cumulative hours of playback and recording over one night and the following morning. i didn't have the camera today, but i had zero playback errors after the initial problems, including playback of the original tape that, at one point, had been constantly stuttering. i've always read about how new cameras sometimes need a little warm-up period, but this was my first experience with anything like this. i'd like to add that all of the problems described in this thread seem to be slightly different, so, until someone chimes in with an experience similar to mine, it should not be read as an experience symptomatic of a prevalent problem.

I am having similar issues on my HV10.

During playback, about every 15-30 minutes or so, the picture & sound will freeze for a second, then jerk back to life. When I replay the same footage, it will happen again, but at different times...so it's clearly a playback issue, and not a recording issue.

I haven't used the camera too terribly much yet (roughly 4 hours of recording, and 5-6 hours of playback), and I have not used the cleaning tape yet. Should that be my next step?

I'd also be interested to hear how Lorry's cam is doing these days.