Two Questions - Progressive Scan & DVCAM...

[gavfreed]

Hi there - I'm new to this forum and have two questions, if anyone knows the answers...

First, does anyone know officially how many times you can record on a DVCAM tape? Only that I have quite a few and have lost track on how many times they've been recorded on. Is there an official amount of times they can be recorded before dropout occurs or general picture loss, or doesn't it matter because it's digital?

Secondly, I have some miniDV tapes that were accidentally recorded in progressive mode (I don't really know too much about this mode) on the JVC GY-HD110 HDV Camcorder. I'm not overly keen on the end film-like result, especially when the camera pans and the picture blurs. Is there any way to convert this back to the regular looking picture or is it too late?!

Many thanks if you can answer both questions!

Gavin.

[edDV]

Hi there - I'm new to this forum and have two questions, if anyone knows the answers...

First, does anyone know officially how many times you can record on a DVCAM tape? Only that I have quite a few and have lost track on how many times they've been recorded on. Is there an official amount of times they can be recorded before dropout occurs or general picture loss, or doesn't it matter because it's digital?

I don't know about official but DV/DVCAM tapes can be reused many times. The Sony DV playback chips have heavy dropout and digital error correction capability that were intended to sell broadcasters on metal evaporative "ME" plus processing as a solution for broadcast quality. There was a history of heavy dropouts with Hi8 ME tapes that made the broadcast market skeptical about using DVC-ME for news. Panasonic siezed the opportunity by offering a more broadcaster friendly metal partical MP format DVCPro standard that used the same tape formulation broadcasters used for digital Betacam, D1 and D2. Sony held tough on ME tape for DV and DVCAM.

Bottom line, Panasonic won the market share war but nobody has since complained about DVC ME tape performance. If your production is important, use fresh tape. For utility use, DVCAM tapes are built for reuse. First sign of tape failure is the same as dirty heads. You see random pixelation. If cleaning the heads doesn't solve the issue, then the tape is worn out.

[edDV]

Secondly, I have some miniDV tapes that were accidentally recorded in progressive mode (I don't really know too much about this mode) on the JVC GY-HD110 HDV Camcorder. I'm not overly keen on the end film-like result, especially when the camera pans and the picture blurs. Is there any way to convert this back to the regular looking picture or is it too late?!

Many thanks if you can answer both questions!

Gavin.

The GY-HD110 records to HDV 960x720p. A commercial DVCAM player should play it to 1080i. If not you can convert it to 1440x1080i in a computer.

[gavfreed]

Many thanks, that answered my questions for the ME tape, especially as sometimes I'll buy that particular type of DVCAM and I'll look into the progressive mode on the computer.

Cheers!

Gavin.

[edDV]

Correction: the GY-HD110 records HDV 1280x720p/29.97fps

This chart may help for compatible software. I don't think it is fully up to date.
http://www.expandore.com/product/JVC/HDV/JVC_ProHD110.htm#Software_support