I am an owner of the sony dsr-450ws, barely over 3 months old. I shot an event which was very long and I had to load a new cassette at one point. I had been using the regular 184min dvcams (blue cases) but I had a few PHDV_276DMs which are sonys digital master tape series. I load this tape in, record bars at the head, then flip the switch from bars to the video signal, and I see I have my rec tally light on, timecode is progressing on both viewfinders, I had no time to stop and rec review since I was following a speech.
Upon me changing my battery later on in the night, I rec review and it is BLANK. Upon rewinding to see if there was any footage recorded, all I keep seeing is BLANK blinking, I try to eject the cassette, it gives me an ERROR message "cassette", at last the tape comes out and I see the tape has been halfway through by the spool window. But there is no timecode read, no picture, no audio, no nothing. However the timecode on my camera shows an hour has passed since I loaded in the new cassette, its mind boggling to me in how exactly this could have happened. I even checked if I had the timecode at f-run but it was set at exactly where it was with the 1st tape (blue) (set, regen to the preset tc) which was perfect!
I checked the tape on various dvcam decks, none of them read any timecode or picture on this tape, it is like it was never used, my last resort is to check it on the new HDV deck HVRM-25U which is what those sony tapes were designed for however you are still able to shoot on it on DVCAM mode. The next morning I went back to the suspect tape, tested it at home with my same camera and recorded fine. Im just out of answers on this one, anyone had similar issues or can recommend anything? It is unfortunate since my second camera was shooting B-roll and I have lost the main shot. Thanks.
