PAL Playback not working on deck or camera.
 

I have the BRHD50U with latest firmware as well as HD100A.

I switched both of them into PAL mode for tape playback.

Neither of them will play back the dvcam tape.

The BRHD50 you hit play and it just stops itself. It won't even try.

The HD100 will play but the lcd screen flashes "Invalid DV 50I" whatever that means.

I can take this tape, put it in the sony hdv deck and it plays it back just fine. I had to capture it from that in fcp with a PAL easy setup.

Its DV footage at 50i nothing more.

So whats the problem?

Go into the second page of the SYSTEM menu on the BR-HD50U and ensure that PB TAPE FORMAT is set to either AUTO or DVCAM.

Your best bet is to leave it on AUTO so that the deck will be able to play HDV, DV and DVCAM.

It was/is set for AUTO.

I'll try and get the tape back from the client and try the DVCAM mode.

Still though, it should have worked on AUTO mode.

Yes... It should have.

Is it possible that it is a DVCAM recording on a normal mini-DV tape, or vise-versa? This may confuse deck and require that you manually set DVCAM in the PB mode.

OK I set the PB from AUTO to DVCAM it again it will not even try to play.

You hit the play button and it just stops itself.


What I really don't get is why both my camera and deck can't do it.

I'm not sure with these cams/deck, might be an issue with tape head alignment possibly (I've had tapes which have recorded on slightly misaligned camera heads which would run the gamut from playing back fine on consumer camcorders, to playing back with sound dropouts on other prosumer camcorders, to basically not playing back at all on some professional decks - a very frustrating problem when you need the original camera you shot on to play tapes back properly!) or even the dreaded mixed format 'gunking' issues if you have been running other brand tapes exclusively through your camera and decks.

Might seem like a silly question but have you run a tape cleaner through your decks?

It not playing at all doesn't sound like that would be the normal cause - but it would be my first port of call if I was troubleshooting it.