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Author
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Topic: Frustrating Playback Issue
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Alexander Johnson
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Seattle, WA, USA
Registered: Jun 2011
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posted June 20, 2011 12:10 AM
Hello folks,
I'm having a bit of trouble playing back certain tapes on an old Sony Handycam for a conversion project. After a couple hours of searching I was unable to find a solution anywhere on the web, so I decided to look for a forum of knowledgeable 8mm hobbyists (that's you!) to see if they might be able to offer some insight.
The problem is that some tapes (perhaps 6 out of the 15 that I've got) will fade to static after a random amount of time during playback. The playback starts smoothly, but will eventually start breaking up, eventually resulting in total signal loss and a blue screen. Oddly enough, the audio will continue to function in the background, but it too will eventually cut out after the video is already lost.
If I press stop and then play again on the camcorder, the video and audio will both return in perfect clarity for a while. Interestingly, if I do this, the period of time before it breaks up again tends to get shorter and shorter as playback continues in chronological order.
This is happening often enough that it's making the recording/conversion process a total nightmare, since I have to record everything multiple times and splice between the video files over the sections where one of them is malfunctioning.
Here's a video of the problem in action.
Any ideas on what's causing this issue and how I could resolve it? Any more information you guys might need for a diagnosis? Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks for your time,
-Alex
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Bill Brandenstein
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1632
From: California
Registered: Aug 2007
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posted June 20, 2011 01:26 PM
Typical dry cleaning tapes are nothing more than metallic sandpaper that polishes off anything softer than the head itself. Heard once that a few seconds of head cleaning was the same wear as playing tapes for 5 hours. Therefore, professionals access the head stack directly and wet clean everything. Done wrong, this can wreck the head stack plus possibly destroy part of a tape, so consumers are typically warned to never try it.
Why I mention it here is that the video head may be fine. The fact that the picture is perfectly clear part of the time means that the head isn't clogged with dirt. However, something else may be -- path guides, or the stationary tracking head, to name two. Also, something in the tape path might be bent slightly out of alignment. All of those could result in the tape starting normally, then skewing badly out of alignment as playback progresses.
Do you fully wind your tapes before playing them? That might not help this particular problem, but it is better all around to "exercise" them.
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Martin Jones
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1269
From: Thetford , Norfolk,England
Registered: May 2008
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posted June 21, 2011 09:50 AM
As an ex-TV/Audio repair engineer and assessing the quoted symptoms I would expect the problem to be one of random failure of the electronics in the CAMERA.
First rule of diagnosis for a non-expert is "ISOLATE the problem area"! In this case, the FIRST sensible action is to ... beg, borrow or steal another camera (there are millions sitting in drawers, one of your friends will probably have one!)... if the fault goes away, it's your camera at fault. If not, move on and check the next item.
If it is, try and buy, beg, borrow or steal a cleaning tape... they are still purchasable... try ebay. Clean the heads. If that doesn't work, scrap the camera, buy a friend's, or a cheap one on ebay.
--------------------
Retired TV Service Engineer
Ongoing interest in Telecine....
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Alexander Johnson
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Seattle, WA, USA
Registered: Jun 2011
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posted October 08, 2011 09:50 PM
Hello again,
I put this project on hold for a while, and attempted to pick it up again yesterday. I had ordered a cleaning tape a while back, so I opened that up and ran it through the camera, following the instructions on the packaging.
I took one of the problem tapes, "exercised" it, and attempted to record. No dice. Same old issue. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Now, the thing that's really getting me, is that this is only happening on certain tapes, and only in certain sections, though the fade outs seem to happen randomly within those sections. If I play back and record the same section 10 times, I may very well capture the entire scene, though it will be in 1 or 2 segment fragments split across all 10 recordings with various traces of distortion in each one.
The data is still there. It hasn't been erased or irretrievably damaged, it just won't play back nicely all at once!
Unfortunately, it would take me an entire day just to piece together an hour of these fragments into a single chronological video file. I don't have that kind of time, so that's not really an option.
After all this, I have a very hard time believing that the camcorder is at fault. It only happens with certain tapes, and only during certain sections. As I said, I've even tried running a cleaning tape through it, and that didn't help. However, I do suppose it would be nice to confirm once and for all that the tapes are at fault. I haven't had any luck finding a spare camera, and I absolutely loathe using eBay, but I've added a bunch of Sony Handycams to my watchlist just in case. Based on the above, do you guys think this is even necessary? I could easily end up spending hundreds of dollars accumulating a bunch of junky old cameras which I don't even need! It was hard enough finding the one I've currently got. :-/
So... Assuming the tapes are at fault, is there anything I can do to repair or condition them to stop being so finicky? Is there some sort of device I can run them through to make them play more consistently? My initial searches have turned up nothing.
In the meantime I'm just going to move on to converting the VHS and VHSC tapes, and dealing with whatever wonderful dilemmas those might bring to the table. ![[Wink]](wink.gif) Any other words of wisdom?
Thanks for the help,
-Alex
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