Tape from Sony Z1 won't playback

[RedTomato]

Hiya,

I just rented a Sony Z1 for some filming. The Z1 has gone back to the rental company, and now I'm trying to capture the tapes to edit them, but I've run into a problem.

My cheap Canon DV handycam doesn't want to playback the tapes - the image is blurred and flickers every couple of secs. The Z1 was set to SD, not HD, so in theory playback via the DV handycam should work fine. In practice it isn't working.

It seems to be creating a new 'scene' every two or three seconds, so in iMovie 08 or iMovie HD I end up with a list of 30 scenes for every minute of footage. Also the picture jumps like it is shifting between widescreen and 4:3 every second. This happens both on my laptop screen and in the Canon viewfinder screen.

Any ideas what it could be? Other tapes that were filmed on the Canon handycam playback and capture just fine - I just made and captured a 10 minute shot of the office to check it was working.

I have FCE available but I'm not totally confident with using it.

Help please?

 

[yagran]

oops!

 

[LethalWolfe]

Can you rent the camera again to capture the tapes?


Lethal

 

[RedTomato]

Hi Lethal,

Thanks for the response. Mmm I'm not keen on paying out again for renting the Z1.

You've inspired me to have a notion - it's possible the camera was mistakenly set to DVCAM mode not DV. What I'm getting looks a lot like this:

http://www.dvforum.com/ubb/get_topic/f/30/t/000047.html

My friend shot my wedding on a Sony DVCam and then transferred his tapes to mini dv so that I could import them to my computer and edit them personally. However, when I try and play these mini dvs on either my Canon GL2 or my friend's Canon GL2 I experience problems.

I first noticed the problems during the bars and tone, where there was some slight digital breakup (artifacts) intermittently running through the colors, there was also no sound, and the stereo display in the corner of my LCD was blinking on and off (as if the tape was skipping forward).

As I mentioned this occurred on both of our GL2s and it occurred regardless of which of the four tapes I attempted to play.

I'm also seeing slowing down of the image on my Canon, which fits with DVCAM being recorded at a faster speed than DV.

It looks like I'm gonna have to find someone with DVCAM gear for playback. TBH I'm amazed a DV camera can make any kind of sense out of DVCAM footage, considering the physical differences on the tape.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Ah, yeah, that's probably it. Good news is that finding something to playback DVCAM is relatively easy as many devices will playback even though they can't record to it.


Lethal