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MiniDV problem–lost footage
This is slightly off-topic, but didn’t find a suitable forum and you guys always seem to help me out.
A student came to the edit suite with his MiniDV footage and his first scene is gone. He claims he watched everything back right when he finished shooting a couple days ago and everything was there. Initially, I was thinking perhaps it got recorded over, however, the wierd thing is, there’s no timecode or any indication that anything was ever recorded onto the first several minutes of the tape, and his second scene is fine and completely in tact. From a fully rewound tape, you hit play and simply get a blank screen for several minutes, then his second scene starts up at zero timecode (a “prosumer” camera–Panasonic DVC7– that resets timecode every time the camera is turned off and the tape was not blacked). We’ve tried watching the tape back in a couple different cameras and decks and get the same result each time.
Obviously, there’s no magic trick to fix the tape and the footage is appearantly gone for good, but any thoughts as to what possibly could’ve happened?
Thanks for the time and any comments.
-Ricky -
2 Replies
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As you can see by the overwhelming response (cricket sfx here), this is just a bit too “odd”.
There is simply no way that there ever once WAS video on the (now) blank, no TC, section of tape if all the kid had was access to a consumer camcorder.
It would be possible on a PRO deck or camcorder (DVCAM mode) to set the TC generator in the wrong position (“set” position) and record “nothing” with a locked TC for a certain amount of time.
But even that would be a “stretch” as you say the first “good” take (“scene 2”) starts with a clean, zeroed TC.I don’t buy the story that he “viewed” it and it was fine.
But I’m not there… I’d really need to examine the tape further.
If you find out more, please post back here.
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Those were my initial thoughts as well, but thought someone might have more experience/knowledge with this possibility.
Now, here’s the funny conclusion. Upon further “interogation” of the student, it turns out he seemed to have a misunderstanding of the question, “Did YOU actually watch these scenes and saw the footage?”. He finally told me that he had actually never seen the footage in question, BUT he “was just a few feet away when [his actors] were watching it”. 😐 I called the actors and they can’t remember that specific footage either.
So, I’m thinking it is a problem with the camera. He can’t remember exactly which camera he took (we have a few DVC7s) and we’ve been having intermittent problems with one of them. I’m thinking he hit record and the camera said it was recording, when it fact it wasn’t. Either that, or the tape was inadvertantly fast forwarded before they started shooting and he never actually hit record for the first scene…
Anyway, thanks for the reply.
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