Help! Problems!

[slacker]

okay, i've got a few things to get sorted for a film i've been working on, and i thought, INDIETALK WILL HAVE THE ANSWERS.

i shot some footage a while back on a borrowed consumer minidv. now, i need to log those tapes, but on my higher end camera the footage is coming up all strange with glitches in the video. i'm sure it's just because they're both different cameras. what would be the best solution for this? i can borrow the camera again and use it to log the tapes, but it's usb, not firewire... can you log via usb on a mac?

also, i have some VHS tapes to log.. how would i got about doing that.. is recording them onto DVD the best way?

 

[Alter Ego Productions]

1. Did you verify and check your tapes on the borrowed cam to make sure they were ok after recording? This is first and foremost


2. Are you mixing tape lubricants from one camera to the next camera? Meaning using different brand of tapes in the borrowed cam than the ones you usually use in your cam? Sometimes depending on the tape used... wet versus dry tape lubes, can be the culprit. When I have to use different tape brands in my editing decks than I usually use... I run a dry tape cleaner for 15 seconds or so before logging the tapes of a different brand. I use Panasonic and sometimes running Sony will clog my heads. You can run a cleaner before you put the tapes in. You can also play a tape and fast forward it for a few minutes than shuttle to rewind play. Go back and forth from fast forward play and reverse play untill the heads unclog. I use this effective method myself.

3. Try another cam or deck with firewire connection. Does your mac have a IEEE 1394 (firewire) port? If not and you have space you can add a cheap firewire card.

4. I would copy the VHS tapes to DV format tapes and log from there. It will be cleaner than writing to DVD and you will have them for archiving purposes. DVD MPEG2 is just asking for for more picture degradation than VHS already has. Remember going to a DVD is compressing the analog VHS picture by using the MPEG2 codec which applies the compression. There will be further loss.

 

[spinner]

okay, i've got a few things to get sorted for a film i've been working on, and i thought, INDIETALK WILL HAVE THE ANSWERS.

i shot some footage a while back on a borrowed consumer minidv. now, i need to log those tapes, but on my higher end camera the footage is coming up all strange with glitches in the video. i'm sure it's just because they're both different cameras. what would be the best solution for this? i can borrow the camera again and use it to log the tapes, but it's usb, not firewire... can you log via usb on a mac?

also, i have some VHS tapes to log.. how would i got about doing that.. is recording them onto DVD the best way?

Define "glitch". Be specific, what are you doing and what actually is happening? I have had some issues as well but I was able to work around them until I can get some improvements. It's probably not your camera.

-- spinner

 

[ccfilms12345]

I had this problem before. Try to use the same type of tape (ie panasonic) on the same camera, don't switch back and forth the tapes in the future. Also when you were recording it, was there any glitches when you looked at the footage with your old camera? Do you have any other camera you can try to see the tapes in? Also try to clean the head with a tape cleaner.

To capture your VHS tapes, you can buy a DVD recorder, you can also bring it to a company that does the transferring, or you can hook up a VHS player and connect the video and audio RCA cables to the input plug on your camera. Connect the firewire from your camera to the computer, hit play and capture the footage onto your computer. The camera acts like a converter to convert from RCA to firewire. You can also use a deck.