Unusable footage.

[Adam Haro]

I've got a bit of problem I'd like to run by everyone and see what my options are.

We shot a wedding a week ago, we always do 2 cameras, a Canon GL2 and a Pansonic DVC60. Never had a problem with either camera but when we loaded the footage we noticed the tape from the DVC60 was real bad. After taking the camera to the shop apparently the tape guides were loose and not aligning the tape on the head correctly. Here is a link to a sample of how it turned out. For the most part we can create a nice video from the one camera but there are a couple necessary shots we need from the bad tape. Any suggestions on a possible fix?

YouTube - bad footage.avi

Thanks
Adam

[Noa Put]

ouch.. you might try recapturing the tape with another camera because during transfer some things might go wrong as well but if it's recorded the way you show then there is not much you can do about it I'm afraid.
You can cut together all usable pieces or even work with some still frames?

[Adam Haro]

Thanks for the response Noa. We have incorporated a few short clips over the audio from the other camera as needed and it looks "ok". The other camera mostly focused on the bride and groom's reaction during the toast so we used a few seconds of the bad footage to establish who is giving the speech and than switching to the good cam.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Did you try dumping the tape from the same camera it was shot with? The mechanism is supposed to self correct tracking to some degree, but if it's enough out of alignment, sometimes it can't quite correct itself.

The description from the repair shop it sounds almost like something was wobbling around, in which case probably not possible to get a clean capture from the tape, but if it was simply misalignment, it should be possible to capture it if you're patient, allowing the camera to correct the tracking - you could FF and REW a couple times before trying to capture, and see if that allows the tape to reposition on the spindles allowing playback to track.

[Adam Haro]

Thanks Dave,

I'll give it a shot. I only tried to play it back once on the DVC60 and it had the same problem. I didn't try rewinding and FF and playing back multiple times.

[Alec Moreno]

If recapturing doesn't work, you might try using some extreme slow motion the lengthen out a good section from each clip.

Alec Moreno
http://www.1Day1ShotProductions.com

[Bill Vincent]

One other option is to contact a local broadcast-quality post production house in your area - they might be able to take your cam and run the output through a Timebase corrector and eliminate some of the problem, although it would take an analog hit in the process. Sometimes TBC's can do wonders - in this case I'm not sure, but if it's absolutely crucial than it's worth a try. They can probably run it through the TBC and then digitize to a new file for you in whatever format you want. It may not fix everything, but it might make the unusable usable.

[Adam Haro]

The footage is fine for 4 or 5 frames and than the next 3 or 4 are bad. I tried slowing it down and it doesn't help much, almost makes the problem more obvious. It looks like the top of the picture is out of sync with the bottom.

I will try to look into the time based correction. Any idea if going that route is very costly?

Thanks

[Bill Vincent]

Most post houses charge you by the hour, so figure 1-2 hours of work depending on how much footage there is. So at most a couple hundred dollars at most, maybe? Have them do a test first tho to make sure it's going to help.