Trevor Webb

OK, an update... I phoned around but everyone with a camera was working on their own projects in various parts of the country so I went to Argos and bought their cheapest mini DV camera purely for the purpous of uploading / playback. But, suffice to say, the tape didn't work any better or worse than when I play it in my XL-1. The camera I bought was a Samsung VP-D371W (all I could afford). 1 of the people I know with a fair few cameras is back from a shoot tomorrow so I will try it in a few cameras there. He also has a stand alone deck. Maybe that would work better? Failing getting this tape working tomorrow I am going to need to re-shoot the scenes that arn't playing properly :( At least I've learnt from this though... Stick to the same brand of tape as camera heads don't like changing. Always run a head cleaner before any important shoot (the dry kind. wet is bad) and always fast forward then rewind the entire tape before you start recording on it to ensure that the tape is on the camera head correctly. I also recall at college they used to tell us to always 'black' the tape before recording on it. I believe they said that this was for timecode issues but would this help with this problem also? Thanks for everyones help so far :)

Did I explain that right? Or was I supposed to of posted this in a different forum? :s Any advice at all from anyone would be greatly appreciated :)

What is the best way for me to combine letterbox footage with anamorphic widescreen footage in a project on adobe premiere pro 2.0 to get the best possible final image? I hate to shrink down the size of the anamorphic footage in a 4:3 project to match the size of the letterbox footage but then again increasing the size of the letterbox footage in a 16:9 project to match also degrades the quality... any advice? Thanks :)

Thanks guys. I don't have any other cameras or stand alone decks to test the tape on but I do know a few people that do. I will make some calls and report back once I've tried it on theirs. Thanks again :) Anyone offering any alternative options in case this doesn't work will be greatly appreciated.

I am currently shooting a feature length zombie comedy film and was uploading footage taken from yesterdays shoot when i realized that in parts of the tape, the image suddenly splits into 12 horizontal lines. On half of the lines of footage, the tape is playing normally but every other line is showing the distorted image of whatever scene was shown before it IE... line 1 is fine, line 2 is distorted, line 3 is fine, line 4 is distorted etc etc I am using brand new Sony Premium Mini-DV tapes and I have already tried running a head cleaner for the camera itself but this has not helped. It is only occasionally that this happens and 90% of the time it appears to be working perfectly but when shooting a film with a very tight schedule, loosing 10% of your footage and not understanding what is wrong is pretty irritating! Do you recommend re-shooting these scenes or is the footage salvageable? Also, how do I prevent this from happening again? Thanks to anyone that can help :)