Picture Artifacts On Playback Off the nanoFlash
 

One for Dan. I'm sitting here playing back on a monitor from the HDMI out socket on the nanoFlash. Every so often the picture sort of breaks up momentarily before re-forming and carrying on as normal.
I also occasionally got a "dark screen" effect, as if the picture has blanked out though not as it were instantaneously, as if it were simply switched off. Again the picture re-appears after a moment.

All I can think is that there is a connection between the timecode trigger via the tape in my XLH1, maybe too close between record/pause/record on occasion, but why the two effects?


Ron

Dear Ronald,

I am sorry it took me so long to respond. I have been traveling since last Friday.

This sounds like a HDMI cable or HDMI connection problem.

Could you try another HDMI cable?

Hi Ronald,

I have an XL H1s and use the tape as a backup and timecode trigger. I find that sometimes when the tape is rewinding to reset itself to start again, and I don't give it enough time to do that before I need to shoot again, the nanoflash will create very short files (sometimes just a frame or two, sometimes a 10 or so). On the very short ones, the image is usually black. I assume this is because the nanoflash is recording the start/stop function of the camera. Now that I know it happens, I watch to make sure the tape is settled before I tell the camera to start recording and thereby before the nanoflash starts recording as well.

If this is the same effect as mine, when you look at your file structure, you will see some very short files where the black hiccups occur. My sense of this is that it is just as you suspected -- the nanoflash tries to record every single time the timecode starts and stops, even when the tape is just resetting itself if you have triggered the record function on the camera too early.

This might be why, if you are playing your files back directly as you took them from the nanoflash (before downloading and working with them) you see the little black flashes and momentarily jerky images.

Hope this helps,
Alan

Dear Ronald,

In our next release, there will be a menu item that you can select which will help the nanoFlash work better with tape based cameras.

Hi Dan,

Do you have an idea about when the next firmware release will be issued?