blockiness on the edge of footage
 

I tried searching for previous posts, but wasn't sure what to search for! I hope someone can help.

I've noticed when reviewing my PD170 footage that there is sometimes this blockiness on the elft edge of the footage, but only when panning. I haven't noticed it with a steady shot, or really even panning to the right, just to the left. I always pan slowly, so I don't know if it shows up when panning quickly. It's somewhat random and infrequent, but seems to be appearing more and more lately (maybe 1 in every 5-10 shots).

The blockiness, which you pros probably already know what I'm talking about, is like mpeg artifacting, or some kind of tearing. I see it in my DVR occasionally, but never in my camera before a couple of weeks ago. It's kind of a block of maybe 10 to 40 pixels square that, when panning, kind of "gets stuck" while everything around it is still panning. It gets stuck for about 5-15 frames, then catches up.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? My cleaning tape was stolen a couple of weddings ago, so I haven't tried that yet. I'm getting one tomorrow to see if that'll help. Any other suggestions? What is it? I hope the camera doesn't need service... it's only about a year old.

Thanks for any advice!

Dan

Actually, I'm shooting with a PD170, but capturing with a little Canon Optura 30... could it be the capture?

It could be that the heads on one of those cameras are a bit out of alignment. Hard to tell without seeing, but you might be describing digital breakup which occurs when you have dropouts on the tape. I'd try cleaning the heads, then capturing with the same camera used to record and see if that clears it up.

Thanks, Boyd, for the recommendation!

Ok I really should do some thorough testing before I post a message. I narrowed it down to my capture camera. I didn't even think of that until my wife mentioned it :-) I re-captured that same segment with my PD170 and it came out perfect.

Now, on my capture camera, I have tto mix tape brands, because most of my co-workers use Sony tapes, and I use Pana. I'm sure I need to run a cleaning tape through it pretty badly.

I'll post here if it helped!

Thanks for looking,
Dan