Need help asap!!!!
 

OK so here is the situation. I filmed a marching band festival yesterday and I came back to import the tape and there is a 5 minute section of the tape that will not import. In fact it will not play at all. I can fast forward it but it is all blocky and not useable. The footage was filmed with an XH-A1 on a brand new Sony HDM63VG tape. Any suggestions on something I can do to get the tape to read would be greatly appreciated. I have already tried to play it through my HV30 with the exact same results.

Is this 5 minute section at the beginning of the tape?

Also, are you able to possibly do without those 5 minutes?

Andrew

Tape Help!!!!
 

Andrew,

No those 5 minutes come at the 38 minute mark on the tape and no I desperately need these 5 minutes.

Just thinking out aloud .... obviously no "cleaning tape required" signal from the camera? May still be possible that you got a sudden blocked head than then cleared after the 5 minute duration. But ideally the camera should throw up an error alert.

Back in the old analogue days you could always disable some sort of servo control and play through regardless of whether you had wonky tracking or not. Not possible with the digital tapes, I think.

As you haven't specified that you have done this, I would ask: Have you tried to play that section back in the original camera that you shot it with? Sometimes different pieces of gear can have ever so subtle differences in their tracking of the information that has been written to tape. I've usually found this between Canon cameras and Sony cameras and decks (it was a while ago).

It could be that the difference in alignment (for some reason) became critical for those 5 minutes. Especially as you get some (blocky from FFing) imagery as you fast forward through that section of tape ... suggesting that there is indeed recorded footage compared to a complete recording failure.

Are you able to access the camera that you used?

Andrew

Jonathan, are you okay? You seem to have gone quiet all of a sudden.

We're here for you, man. Just let us know that you are okay!

Andrew

Still here...
 

Andrew,

Still here. Was not able to retrieve the footage. I filmed the same band the week earlier so I was able to use some shots form the previous week where you could not tell that it was from a different stadium. Thanks for trying to help. Hopefully this was just a freak thing.