Dropouts during DV capture
 

I recently shot 2 tapes at an event, and during capture to the PC a large number of random dropped frames were noted. Both tapes were Sony standard grade (blue shrinkwrap 3-pack). The frame drops occurred at nearly the same areas of both tapes, no idea why. About halfway through 3/4 of the way into the tape brief dropouts of between several frames to several seconds were showing up. The video/audio simply freezes, no blocking, then resumes. This showed up during steady-run taping, not at the beginning or end of a take.

Is there any way to tell during recording, if dropouts are happening, or are you simply trusting that it won't happen? I ran the headcleaner once after this, and running a trial record straight thru another Sony cassette and will check it. Visual of the heads looks clean, but can you tell by eye, and is there a better way to maintain them than the head cleaner cassette? They're abrasive I understand, not real good, but the only way.

You can't really eyeball microscopic debris that could cause a headclog. Apart from using a head cleaning tape, the only other (& best) way would be to manually clean the heads, which should be left to a professional unless you know how to do it yourself properly.

Bill

Connect your camera to your TV and then playback. If no problems then it is an issue with your capture -PC/Mac.

Cheers,
Robert

Were you recording over previously used DV tapes?