[Jmanfivek]

Perhaps the video reference signal is not clean/good??? (Though it seems like you checked for that.) The fun thing about that problem is that it tends to be intermittent and take a few to several minutes to rear its ugly head. Your symptoms seem like the deck not liking the reference signal (which gives dropouts and the channel condition flashing).

Thanks for the reply! The strange thing is, the HDCam deck is having no troubles with simply using the SDI video input from the Kona as the video reference signal. The other stange thing is that, on the dbeta with CONFI enabled, and menu item #105 turned on (to flash the STOP button if the video reference signal is out of phase), everything looks great.

One way to check is to use another source for reference video. I think you can use a SD-SDI source with black picture as the reference source… e.g. throw a test pattern on the HDCAM, take SD-SDI off that, cable that into the ref. input on the dbeta.

Tapes need to be striped to the new reference video source. Make sure the stop button light is not blinking.

This is a great suggestion. I will try this next. When you say the tape needs to be striped to the new reference video source, do you mean I have to black and code the beginning of the tape while the HDCam SDI out is connected to the dbeta VIDEO REF in?

From what I remember, some of the switches on the deck also controls where ref. video is read from. Check the manual… it has a diagram showing the (perverse) logic. When you print to tape, it might be that the deck needs to grab reference from the video/SDI/kona (not the ref. input), and the Kona needs to grab reference from your reference source (e.g. the Aja Gen10 or some other source).

Yeah, I’ve been checking and double-checking these settings and switches. Basically the OUT REF on the sub control panel needs to be set to REF and menu item #309 needs to be set to 1 in order for the deck to use the input video signal as the video reference.

2- Did you check the error logger? What does it say?

Error logger where exactly?

3- It might be worth taking the legalizer out of the equation. Once you have your master printed to tape, you can enable pre-read and play/record the video onto itself through the legalizer.

Actually I have tried this and I even called the manufacturer of the legalizer to ask about any known (or even possibly unknown issues) regarding video reference signals. They claim the unit simply takes it in and spits it out without any change. And, taking the legalizer out of the equation didn’t make a difference in my testing.

4- Is confidence on or off? That might help rule out tape issues. If confidence is on you can spot problems with bad heads.

Today I have been testing with CONFI enabled. There appear to be no issues during the recording. The stop button doesn’t flash, the LTC and VITC coding seems fine and the picture is perfect for the duration of the recording.

I went back and played a tape that has always played fine for me and low and behold, BLAM – the issue showed up.

So now I am thinking this is a playback issue and not a recording issue. The only way to confirm this is to play the tape on another dbeta deck. I’m in the process of tracking one down here in Lithuania.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions! 🙂