I have an issue with some video recorded on to HDV tapes. I shot twenty HDV tapes on a Canon XLH1A. Most of the tapes recorded fine and have no problem. 3 of the tapes have problem on the first 20 minutes of the tape. When attempting to play back the video it will play back for about a second and a half and them freeze. Continue to play another second and a half and freeze again over and over. I have been able however to play it back in slow motion mode on the camera which is 1/3 of normal speed. It appears all the frames are there but it only plays back in slow mode. My thought was if FCP 7 or another editing platform would capture at 10fps then I could play the video 1/3 speed (essentially 10fps) and capture in capture now and then speed it up after to get it to normal speed. This has me very worried as the footage is not something I can shoot over and it is for broadcast. Anybody have any ideas of how I can go about this? I have tried Sony Media Services and they have not gotten back to me. Is there anyone in town who can handle these types of issues? Would really appreciate any advice or possible solutions for this issue! Thank you!

Tom

I can't remember offhand if this is possible with HDV, but for anything that we had that had damaged timecode or wouldn't capture correctly, we would set the capture settings to 'non-controllable device', run the tape, and then hit capture now. This would capture any signal that was showing on the screen.

As I said, HDV was a whole 'nother kettle of fish, but it might work if the computer doesn't try and figure out what it is before getting in in there.

Thank you for the advice Jude. Much appreciated!

Tom

Yes - this works.

I had to do the same thing last year with an entire tape (a continuous seminar recording). The tape would only play back without dropouts using the camera's (XLH1) slow motion mode.

I set FCP to non-controllable device and hit capture now, then I played back the tape in slo-mo. I seem to remember I had to keep hitting the play button on the camera to keep it playing - maybe that depends how bad the issue is.

Only drawback - you don't get audio using this method. Luckily I had a 2nd angle that had an on-camera mike so I got away with it.

I found the sped-up clip very processor-intensive to work with so once I'd got the speed right I exported a Prores version.

Hope this helps!