mini dv from europe (italy) problem

[bill71ok]

Hello my name bill walsh i am a profesional photographer and have been asked by a client to do some wedding albums from her wedding in venice. She also asked me to put he wedding tapes (mini dv) onto dvd. I asked a local vedio editor to put the tapes onto dvd so i could do the edit but when we had a look there was nothing there. I know nothing about this sort of thing so im hoping some one can help. The editor said that there was definitly something on the tape but was surprised that there was no sound.
When we put the tapes in a camcorder a message of unrecconised format on the screen. Can anyone help?

[hech54]

Did the customer have an NTSC camcorder?
Normally NTSC is not a problem with European VCRs and DVD players....but I'm not too sure about an NTSC MiniDV tape.

[thecoalman]

If the tapes were recorded on NTSC equipment you need a NTSC capable mini-dv cam. No way around it.

Other possiblities include that it was recorded in LP mode in which case you would need the cam that recoreded the footage which will hopefiully work. LP is a bad thing as far as mini-DV goes...

FYI going to DVD before editing is not the way to go about it, the tapes should be transfered to your computer over firewire as DV-AVI, this is an exact copy on tape. Encoding for DVD playback is the last step.