DV tape import splitting up, playback glitch? (Canon MD120)

[drsoul]

Hi there,

I have a canon MD120 which i've used a fair bit but not of late.
I'm trying to import a tape i recorded about a year ago.
I now have a new laptop so have a bit of a daisy chain of cables to get it up and running through iMovie.
I can see the camera and can control and import, however it keeps spitting up the the video into multiple split second videos. This seems intermittent (some sections that glitch will playback ok next time round) and the DV camera seems to play back in a similar way when disconnected.

Is this likely an issue with the heads/tape or formatting?

Sadly i haven't got any spare tapes or cleaning tape to test with.

Any direction would be appreciated.

thanks

[lordsmurf]

Welcome.

DV import splitting is by design, native to the import. Some software can bypass overly breaking up the DV data transfers, but it will still happen if the break it too long (and "too long" is whatever the software decides that means).

Worse yet, DV cameras/software can sometimes (often?) lose seconds of video in this constant start/stop action, which is why analog capture is also suggested as a backup to important tapes. Sometimes seconds matters, especially because most consumers hit "record" right when action was starting, not giving themselves buffer from pre-roll.

So it may be nothing to do with heads, nor cleaning, if you're just seeing video that breaks.

There are oddities in your statement, "some sections that glitch will playback ok next time round", and my test would be to analog capture a section. Only then could I truly see the continuous playback to determine if there is a camera or tape error.

This also assumes you've verified the tape has no physical damage, no mold, etc.

[aramkolt]

Agree, couldn't hurt to look what the analog output is like and you could capture from that, though not losslessly. However, If the viewable result looks better, you might just end up wanting to capture that way, or you could capture from both simultaneously.

Also agree that mold or sticky tape could cause the issue, but I don't think it is quite as common on DV as some other formats, but anything is possible with certain storage conditions.

Next thing to try would be a different camera/player to see if you get the same issue. If you are unfortunate and the tapes happen to be recorded in LP mode (which was nonstandard and some tapes only reliably play correctly in the machine that recorded them), then you have more limited options. There are a very limited number of models that will play any LP tape flawlessly as they allow for a variable tape speed during playback is my understanding. The best known example of such a machine would be the DSR-2000(A). The "A" models have the firewire output option standard and the DSR-2000 could have had firewire output optionally.

Dirty heads often will have very wide horizontal bars that don't update as the video moves, or have extremely pixelated areas.

Does the player do this with all tapes, or just some? If you make a new recording on a blank area of tape, does the player play that back fine without starting and stopping?