[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Do you mean what the Newtek Video Toaster team used to call “organic wipes” with sheep, clouds, spilling paint, and a semi-nude Kiki V. shown in silhouettes?

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Sounds like a poorly recorded tape.
Possibly a miss-threading when the tape was loaded into the original camcorder.
Possibly a partially-clogged head in the original camcorder.
Possibly just a defective original tape (I’ve never had it happen in DV, but many times in BetaCam, so who knows?).
I would not blame the fact that the tape was shot DV instead of DVCAM, but again, its hard to tell from out here in the COW pasture.

The solution is normally what you’ve already tried: a complete re-dub.
So I guess you’re now at the “creative workaround” stage.

You might try to re-dub until you come to a “bad section”, back up the playback tape a bit and “overlap” at a new starting-point.
Continue until you get the best dub of all the scenes you need.
Then capture the best sections of the new dub.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[tony salgado] “However leaving the music playing in the background which was captured during the actual event is less likely to be a problem then using copyrighted music on top of the video since you were documenting the event and the client needed to have cleared permission to use the music at the event.”

That’s really the reason for the original posted question.
But taking your logic per se doesn’t quite go far enough.

Playing the music “on-location” (Public Performance) is ONE type of clearance (for which the DJ or band is responsible),
but “use in a video” (Sync Rights) is ANOTHER type of clearance entirely.
(And guess who needs to arrange THAT?)

The music IS actually SYNCED to the VIDEO (sync sound, and the fact that, when played, the audio is “connected” to the video), and that the “new work” (the video production) HAS the music IN IT (“you” recorded and edited it that way)… this is the actual situation for which videographers are therefore liable.

Granted, music heard in the “background” should be a “lesser sin”, but in today’s climate of “emboldened-by-court-rulings” copyright-holders, it might be better to err on the side of caution.

And, consider this, if “Uncle Charlie” happens to shoot the same scene (audio and video) in his home video footage and “YOU” (the pro videographer) do likewise, which person might be held “more liable” if the case should come to litigation?

Wish it wasn’t that way, but we all know it IS.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

If we are strictly speaking of “legality”, you are not authorized to use any copyrighted music (without clearance) in a professional video.

If you pay close attention, you’ll hear that even “America’s Funniest Home Videos” will generally replace any copyrighted songs heard in the background with their own music on many submitted clips before airing them.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[Scott] “Just out of curiosity, what failures have you had with recording in LP mode? In 4 years I have never had a failure and am curious what has happened to other people.”

Video dropouts
Audio dropouts
Timecode dropouts
Various combinations of the above

Incompatibility between recording unit and playback unit (if different.)
Incompatibility between recording unit and playback unit (if the same.)

LP is so unreliable is even disclaimed by most the camcorder manufacturers right in the manual.

The way LP is achieved is to just to SLOW DOWN the TAPE MOTION (and not the heads) so that the same info that would be recorded across a larger AREA of tape in SP mode is “crammed” into a smaller section of tape.
This means the head “swipes” (tracks) are very close together and difficult to “separate” during playback.
It requires very tight tolerances and “perfect” tracking to follow the recorded material.

Happy that you have had no problems.
(I guess we won’t go into what happens as your gear AGES and the heads and guides start to wear.)

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

iStabilize pretty amazing!

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Questions like this are posted very frequently. And many (most?) of the problems are solved by a simple procedure.

There is a function in FCP that is often overlooked… and it can help with many audio and video “skipping”, “sticking” and “missing” problems.

You should “Mixdown” the Audio for playback before you dub out of FCP, or during the edit, if you have audio/video stuttering, drop-outs or freezes.

NOTE: Mixdown has even been demonstrated to help with slipping, skipping problems (or “missing” audio clips) for files being EXPORTED as QT (or similar) files out of FCP.

First, SELECT ALL of your audio tracks (highlight them) on the timeline, then:

Sequence Menu > Render Only > Mixdown.

You should see a dialog box telling you its rendering.

It might seem to make little sense that “Mixing down” even simple audio tracks will “fix” complex video “freezes” or random audio dropouts to tape or export, but it CAN.

NOTE: It does not matter of you only have one audio track, if there are random freezes during output, you should try the Mixdown.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

The problem is likely that the unit (camera/deck) used to record the tape and your camcorder have head-alignment differences.
You may need to borrow another DV unit to dub in instead of your Elura 70.
Try playing the tape on another DV unit.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

Yes.
Any camcorder with an external mic input can be connected to a Beachtek or similar input bridge.

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

[billelder] “Or, if the guy feels more comfortable doing it at home, then you can take those tracks and make them AIF files or MP3 to put on your time line.”

You should not put any mp3 files on a FCP timeline.
FCP is incompatible with mp3.