Interesting video. The 250 was an office player. Hence the lack of proper connections. It would have been used just for reviewing tapes. Your faulty machine was showing CTL in the time code display. I suspect this was showing the control track which this format had. Therefore it could show control track time code from the linear track if the main drum was knackered / no RF. The larger machines got hot and notorious for capacitor issues as you have found. BBC news fitted out their News Centre with DVCPRO in about 1999 but most were bought back by Sony who supplied them with the very nice DSR 2000 a couple of years later. That can’t have helped DVCPRO, certainly in the UK. Good luck keeping all these great machines going.
I don't think the drum is knackered, I suspect capacitor failure in the RF amplifiers. Actually I've decided I will have a go at fixing that machine, since I now have better soldering equipment for SM capacitors (see my TH-cam video on that). I wonder what Sony did with all those DVCPRO decks. Probably destroyed them to help kill off the format.
AWESOM. I just bought this DVCPRO recorder with exact same problem with L size tapes. This is second time when I find help to my problems from you videos (solving misangled video8 tapes was first). Thank you and keep doing more :D
I think the only reason to bother with DVCPRO was the DVCPRO50 variant. Imagine that Ampex suggested digitizing 8-mm format in 1985 with 50 Mbit/s codec for pro usage, which would give 22 minutes play time. Ten years before DVCPRO50, thirteen years before Digital8. Ampex could get back to the forefront, but it did not.
@@video99couk Interesting. I thought DVCPRO50 was quite popular with the BBC. Here: web.archive.org/web/20061230202412/www.vmi.tv/equipment/product-details/?pid=11 "The AJ-SDX900 is a phenomenal camcorder capable of great filmic results in Standard Definition and shoots in DVCPro 50 format in 25P progressive or 50i interlaced. It has recently been used on such programmes as BBC If, Space Race, Impressionists, Rome (BBC), Nuremburg Trial etc and is a favourite of the BBC."
I'm not a video engineer or anything similar, but I do have both DVCAM and DVCPRO machines. I can't remember the model numbers but the DVCPRO is the same as your one with the built-in monitor, I believe it was the only SD model which could take the XL size tapes. The DVCAM is a top of the range machine, even larger and heavier than the Panasonic. both have the Firewire option boards installed. both of my machines were bought cheaply when tape went out of fashion My experience with the machines has been different to yours, the Panasonic has always performed faultlessly, while I have had a couple of problems with the Sony, though it does seem to be stable now. Of course, my few tens of hours use on just one pair of machines may not be typical, and opinion in the industry does seem to be that Panasonic machines have reliability issues. Don't know why as their domestic VHS machines don't seem to. I don't really know why, but somehow the Sony does somehow 'feel' better to use. I like the monitor on the Panasonic, and the fact that it is switchable to NTSC though it has to be switched manually and does not detect the signal type on record or the tape format on playback. I think there was a place for a quarter inch professional format, but not two. Maybe Panasonic should have designed the format and Sony built the machines. DVCAM was successful, but not much better than consumer DV. If I had been designing the format I think I would have gone straight to something like DVCPRO 50; a professional format probably ought to be 4:2:2 I think. I have both L and XL DVCPRO 50 tapes, with the blue doors; they run for 92 and 126 minutes. I would also have supported the M size tapes for camera use, which should have given a run time of about 33 minutes, enough for this purpose. The original Sony DVCAM tapes ran for a round number of minutes while the later Digital Master ones added a few extra minutes, as did the Panasonic DVCPRO ones, useful to record bars and tone, and a countdown clock before a programme of exact 30 or 60 minutes for example, and also to avoid recording anything on the first minute or so of the tape in case of damage while threading. i'm not sure that the 18 micron track width of DVCPRO was really necessary, if the 15 of DVCAM had been used longer run times could have been achieved. I have heard that early metal tapes tended to have dropout issues which were reduced by the wider tracks, but that later tapes were improved. Panasonic reduced the track width for DVCPRO HD EX to give it the same runtime as DVCPRO 50. The XL red tapes, like the one you show only give a runtime for the EX format. I think the later HD machines which could take that size tape may have only recorded at the slower EX speed, were able to also play the earlier faster one; can anybody confirm this? I've never even seen a DVCPRO HD machine. You mention that the two formats are not compatible over Firewire. I don't think they ever could be since the codecs are different and Firewire carries the signal in encoded DV or DVCPRO form. DV and DVCCAM are compatible over Firewire, an advantage of DVCAM. A digital transfer can be made, but only by using SDI and re-encoding on the destination machine. You briefly mentioned the chroma subsampling difference, but I don't think you returned to the subject later in the video, or did I miss it? This seems to be a particular problem in PAL, where DVCAM uses 4:2:0 while DVCPRO uses 4:1:1 I think; have I got that the right way round? Converting from one to the other seems to give you the worst of both worlds.
I'm a little bit vague on the chroma sampling so I didn't waffle on about a subject I'm not clear on. I would love to get hold of an XL tape if you have one to spare.
I did the training course on DVCPRO (I think it was in Slough). I didn't like working on the machines, I recall that alignment was especially bothersome.
5 yr old video but maybe you still see comments from us. What is end-of-life drum head-hours life on these? And do the hours count up only while in play/record? (probably)
Head life is very variable depending on tape brands, back tension settings, head cleaning cycles and even just good luck. Generally heads are fine for about 2000 - 3000 hours, in my humble opinion. Most professional machines will count up the hours that the heads are spinning. So head life is "used up" with the head spinning and the tape stationary, and the STAND BY light lit. You can set a reduced STAND BY time in the menu to conserve tape and head life, or press that button to put the machine into full stop when you have a tape in it.
I learned a lot from your video! I have a DVCProHD1200A deck and am trying to set it up for capture to either Avid and/or Premiere. I using an IMAC for editing. Do you have a video on "how to set up the deck for capture?" Is there additional equipment I will need? Thank you
In short, use an SDI capture card and connect to the SDI output. The Blackmagic Design DeckLink Mini Recorder card is about £125. Some DVCPRO decks can output standard definition via a Firewire port, then you can capture using a Firewire card if your computer doesn't have Firewire installed already. Make sure you capture to a physically different internal drive than the operating system uses, SSD is the preferred option. If you can't do that with a Mac then use a PC, it's often easier to capture with PC than Mac because they are simple to upgrade.
So all those digital tape format was consider to be digital intermediate for editing or printing CGI or compositing effect ? i Wonder if they still use this or every pro became full tapeless with direct to disc hardrive or SSD and memory card , editing on computer became the norm, but maybe they still use this as archiving format ...
I had (and partially still have) pretty much the same problems with an AJ-D250 i bought cheap on eBay as defective. E-62, E-64, all of them, and expecially L cassettes not going fully down, takeup reel sometimes stopping to work. First big issue was the grease on the 2 levers shifting the reels around depending on cassette size. The problem was easy to feel because when manually shifting the reels, the supply wheel felt "stuck". The reason for this was grease that got sticky over the long time the unit was stored without being used. As a consequence, the forces applied to move the reels bent some small other parts in the mechanism, so i had some fun taking all this small stuff apart, cleaning, applying new grease, forgetting to note the relation of 2 gears and then take another 2 hours to get them properly aligned that the rec inhibit switch moves correctly together with the reels. Besides the bent parts, the levers even jumped out of their actuator part. The seller wrote, he ejected the tape after the unit was stored a long time and then the problems begun. I assume the grease was even more sticky when he did this, which can be the reason for all the follow-up damage. All in all, not very hard to fix, if you have enough patience and are comfortable working with tiny parts :) Remaining problems - L cassettes sometimes are ejected right after insertion and if you get the in, the takeup reel sometimes just stops, leading to jamming the tape enough before the E-6x is displayed, but in most cases, powering off an on can fix the situation. I assume there still are some problems with old grease irritating the torque regulation of the takeup reel. So if you didn't throw away your 230 already, maybe that's a bit of help.
By the way - i recently also bought a DVCAM camcorder (Sony DSR-130P), which also had to struggle with reel speed problems in the beginning. That magically disappeared after some minutes and after recently recording a full hour and playing it back, i assume the problem is gone. Very likely also stuck grease in the mechanics. So at least here, it's not just Panasonic suffering the age. Not to mention the 152 SMD capacitors i replaced in that JVC KY-27 camera, nearly 100 in the BVW-300P, all leaking and damaging the PCBs. From my statistics, this problem is especially common with build years 1989-1995. No leaking capacitors in Panasonic gear yet, no other issues found so far, so i didn't check their parameters yet. Non-SMD capacitor problems reach back more into the 1980s, especially in JVC gear. And interestingly, Panasonic electrolytic capacitors mainly fail in JVC gear :)
I did look at whether grease was a problem but I think it's gear damage on the cassette carriage. I have kept it and may look at it again. I get into a grease problem on my video about the Sony BVW-22P Betacam Player: th-cam.com/video/soGAs1HI57U/w-d-xo.html
@@video99couk In my case, the reel motors didn't take their correct positions, so the cassette spools didn't fit them, resulting in the problem that the cassette didn't completely go down. After reworking the reel shifting part, this worked fine. That was my first idea on your 230 also. If the reel is off by a mm or so, manually pushing might be enough force to snap it to the right position. Besides some sporadically low torque von the takeup reel, my machine works great again. At least with the M DVCPRO tapes, no problem, the DVCAM tapes work, but i see that the tape slackens a bit from time to time where it goes back into the cassette. I think torque might require readjustment, but i still don't have a service manual, seems to be a firmware based setting.
Thanks for your thorough look into DVC Pro and it's various iterations. Several years ago I was using it with success, but now I find myself in need of reconnecting my Panasonic AJ-D230H machine to my Win10 computers, and I've had absolutely no luck. I would consider cannibalizing my old machines and the old video cards currently in storage, but would prefer not to (a lot of time and effort that might not pan out). Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!!
I don't think the DVCPRO port outputs a "standard" DV stream on most DVCPRO decks, so it won't work with a normal Firewire port. A few later models could also output a normal DV stream though. Perhaps send an email via my web site.
Hi there, I'm currently having this exact problem and was hoping you might have found a solution by now that you would be willing to share with me? Thanks so much
I need some advice I bought 2 dvcpro tape decks to play my panasonic mini dv tapes and capture to my pc. First one I bought was the aj d230h the second was the aj d250 here is the problems the servo had problems and the tapes showed a lot of digital noise I cleaned both decks with a mini dv tape cleaner. It did not fix the problem. I'm not experienced in fixing tape decks . What deck would you recommend that's a work horse and durable ?
If you don't need to use DVCPRO, get a Sony DVCAM. They are more reliable. Some will even play (some sizes) of DVCPRO tapes. Not to say that DVCAM decks don't fail, I've had some die, but in general they are better than DVCPRO.
There's a composite video output at the rear, you just need a BNC to phono cable to the yellow socket of your TV (assuming it has analogue inputs). There may be unbalanced phono "monitor" audio sockets at the back but if not you may need a quarter inch heaphone plug to twin phono cable for red and white audio inputs to TV.
LOL, you sure are right that Panasonic did NOT learn their lesson with MII. I have 6 DVC format machines and only one of them works properly. it also does not have a FireWire connector but I was able to find a rare SDI I/O board for it. With my DVCAM decks, on the other hand, they just seem to work, no mechanical issues and no capacitor issues, even with the lower end DSR-40. Oh, and the DVCAM decks have a Firewire output that is identified by every editing program I have ever used because it conforms to the DV25 standard, the only gripe I have about the decks is the 4 pin "Mini Firewire" connector. I also have an MII deck, what a nightmare to keep that thing running...Oh yeah and I MUST keep the top off and watch every transfer with that machine because it will eat a tape at the drop of a hat.
Some HDV decks replaced the mini Firewire connector with the much more robust large one. I had to replace a Firewire socket on a DSR-11 DVCAM once, I took one from a scrap camcorder. The MII format was such a bodge, the tape was too thin so it was easy to get into problems. Mould is also a very serious issue with these thin tapes. That said, my particular MII machine is actually quite reliable, it's not eaten any tapes since I fixed a fault with the cassette carriage a few years ago.
D5, isn't that a format consisting of just one machine? AJ-HD3700H. I've considered getting one just for laughs, but it's not likely that anyone actually has recordings stuck on these tapes because anyone who used D5 must have known that it was a dead-end and not an archive format. I gather that the BBC used D3 as an archive format for a while and deeply regretted it. Does the D5 machine play D3 too?
I worked on stuff for FOX and they had us outputting to D5. They even had stuff mastered to D1! We ended converting them mastered to HDSR, then LTO's, then finally PRORES files.
DV, DV LP, DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO P, HDV 1080i,HDV720p, HDV720p LP, DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO HD EX, and if you include formats using DV type codecs on different tape widths Digital 8 and Digital S (D9). I don't think the proposed D9 HD was ever actually launched. Did we really need all of those formats?
I'm not sure I want to pull my HDCAM deck apart. However I am still looking for an HDCAM-SR machine, as my HDCAM player doesn't support that format. If I get an HDCAM-SR then I will certainly feature the format, but at the moment machines like the Sony SRW-5500 seem to fetch serious money.
@@video99couk You don't need to... just show us the mecanism and talk about the format. I love how you explain things! Thank you for the channel. I'm from Brazil, so I probably will never use your services. But I certanly already admire your talent with electronics. Thanks!
I believe JVC Digital-S machines are fairly reliable. MII is crap. Most DVCPRO machines are crap but with some of the very last models (DVCPRO-HD) they may have got a handle on the capacitor problems.
Interesting video. The 250 was an office player. Hence the lack of proper connections. It would have been used just for reviewing tapes. Your faulty machine was showing CTL in the time code display. I suspect this was showing the control track which this format had. Therefore it could show control track time code from the linear track if the main drum was knackered / no RF. The larger machines got hot and notorious for capacitor issues as you have found. BBC news fitted out their News Centre with DVCPRO in about 1999 but most were bought back by Sony who supplied them with the very nice DSR 2000 a couple of years later. That can’t have helped DVCPRO, certainly in the UK. Good luck keeping all these great machines going.
I don't think the drum is knackered, I suspect capacitor failure in the RF amplifiers. Actually I've decided I will have a go at fixing that machine, since I now have better soldering equipment for SM capacitors (see my TH-cam video on that). I wonder what Sony did with all those DVCPRO decks. Probably destroyed them to help kill off the format.
video99.co.uk I thought they’d crush them, but they were sold on. Good luck with the repair. Hope you get it going.
AWESOM. I just bought this DVCPRO recorder with exact same problem with L size tapes. This is second time when I find help to my problems from you videos (solving misangled video8 tapes was first). Thank you and keep doing more :D
when I worked at a tv station we used primarily Beta SP and DVCPro. That deck with the built in monitor is awesome, what a neat feature!
See my video on HDCAM-SR, that machine also has a lovely monitor built in, as does one of my DVCAM decks.
I think the only reason to bother with DVCPRO was the DVCPRO50 variant. Imagine that Ampex suggested digitizing 8-mm format in 1985 with 50 Mbit/s codec for pro usage, which would give 22 minutes play time. Ten years before DVCPRO50, thirteen years before Digital8. Ampex could get back to the forefront, but it did not.
Strangely though, the vast majority of DVCPRO tapes I get in are the original 25 flavour. As for DVCPRO-HD, it barely got off the ground.
@@video99couk Interesting. I thought DVCPRO50 was quite popular with the BBC. Here: web.archive.org/web/20061230202412/www.vmi.tv/equipment/product-details/?pid=11 "The AJ-SDX900 is a phenomenal camcorder capable of great filmic results in Standard Definition and shoots in DVCPro 50 format in 25P progressive or 50i interlaced. It has recently been used on such programmes as BBC If, Space Race, Impressionists, Rome (BBC), Nuremburg Trial etc and is a favourite of the BBC."
I'm not a video engineer or anything similar, but I do have both DVCAM and DVCPRO machines. I can't remember the model numbers but the DVCPRO is the same as your one with the built-in monitor, I believe it was the only SD model which could take the XL size tapes. The DVCAM is a top of the range machine, even larger and heavier than the Panasonic. both have the Firewire option boards installed. both of my machines were bought cheaply when tape went out of fashion
My experience with the machines has been different to yours, the Panasonic has always performed faultlessly, while I have had a couple of problems with the Sony, though it does seem to be stable now. Of course, my few tens of hours use on just one pair of machines may not be typical, and opinion in the industry does seem to be that Panasonic machines have reliability issues. Don't know why as their domestic VHS machines don't seem to. I don't really know why, but somehow the Sony does somehow 'feel' better to use. I like the monitor on the Panasonic, and the fact that it is switchable to NTSC though it has to be switched manually and does not detect the signal type on record or the tape format on playback.
I think there was a place for a quarter inch professional format, but not two. Maybe Panasonic should have designed the format and Sony built the machines. DVCAM was successful, but not much better than consumer DV. If I had been designing the format I think I would have gone straight to something like DVCPRO 50; a professional format probably ought to be 4:2:2 I think. I have both L and XL DVCPRO 50 tapes, with the blue doors; they run for 92 and 126 minutes. I would also have supported the M size tapes for camera use, which should have given a run time of about 33 minutes, enough for this purpose. The original Sony DVCAM tapes ran for a round number of minutes while the later Digital Master ones added a few extra minutes, as did the Panasonic DVCPRO ones, useful to record bars and tone, and a countdown clock before a programme of exact 30 or 60 minutes for example, and also to avoid recording anything on the first minute or so of the tape in case of damage while threading. i'm not sure that the 18 micron track width of DVCPRO was really necessary, if the 15 of DVCAM had been used longer run times could have been achieved. I have heard that early metal tapes tended to have dropout issues which were reduced by the wider tracks, but that later tapes were improved. Panasonic reduced the track width for DVCPRO HD EX to give it the same runtime as DVCPRO 50. The XL red tapes, like the one you show only give a runtime for the EX format. I think the later HD machines which could take that size tape may have only recorded at the slower EX speed, were able to also play the earlier faster one; can anybody confirm this? I've never even seen a DVCPRO HD machine.
You mention that the two formats are not compatible over Firewire. I don't think they ever could be since the codecs are different and Firewire carries the signal in encoded DV or DVCPRO form. DV and DVCCAM are compatible over Firewire, an advantage of DVCAM. A digital transfer can be made, but only by using SDI and re-encoding on the destination machine. You briefly mentioned the chroma subsampling difference, but I don't think you returned to the subject later in the video, or did I miss it? This seems to be a particular problem in PAL, where DVCAM uses 4:2:0 while DVCPRO uses 4:1:1 I think; have I got that the right way round? Converting from one to the other seems to give you the worst of both worlds.
I'm a little bit vague on the chroma sampling so I didn't waffle on about a subject I'm not clear on.
I would love to get hold of an XL tape if you have one to spare.
I did the training course on DVCPRO (I think it was in Slough). I didn't like working on the machines, I recall that alignment was especially bothersome.
The lidless machine reminds me of DLT8000 computer tape drive.
5 yr old video but maybe you still see comments from us. What is end-of-life drum head-hours life on these? And do the hours count up only while in play/record? (probably)
Head life is very variable depending on tape brands, back tension settings, head cleaning cycles and even just good luck. Generally heads are fine for about 2000 - 3000 hours, in my humble opinion. Most professional machines will count up the hours that the heads are spinning. So head life is "used up" with the head spinning and the tape stationary, and the STAND BY light lit. You can set a reduced STAND BY time in the menu to conserve tape and head life, or press that button to put the machine into full stop when you have a tape in it.
I learned a lot from your video! I have a DVCProHD1200A deck and am trying to set it up for capture to either Avid and/or Premiere. I using an IMAC for editing. Do you have a video on "how to set up the deck for capture?" Is there additional equipment I will need? Thank you
In short, use an SDI capture card and connect to the SDI output. The Blackmagic Design DeckLink Mini Recorder card is about £125. Some DVCPRO decks can output standard definition via a Firewire port, then you can capture using a Firewire card if your computer doesn't have Firewire installed already. Make sure you capture to a physically different internal drive than the operating system uses, SSD is the preferred option. If you can't do that with a Mac then use a PC, it's often easier to capture with PC than Mac because they are simple to upgrade.
@@video99couk Thank you for taking the time and outlining the information I need to capture from my DVCPro deck. Greatly appreciated!
Hey man, at least it didn't catch fire mid shoot. God I hated tape.
So all those digital tape format was consider to be digital intermediate for editing or printing CGI or compositing effect ? i Wonder if they still use this or every pro became full tapeless with direct to disc hardrive or SSD and memory card , editing on computer became the norm, but maybe they still use this as archiving format ...
Everyone now is pretty much tapeless, even for archiving. But these machines are still very much required for playback of existing tapes.
Your title is actually a meme
I had (and partially still have) pretty much the same problems with an AJ-D250 i bought cheap on eBay as defective. E-62, E-64, all of them, and expecially L cassettes not going fully down, takeup reel sometimes stopping to work.
First big issue was the grease on the 2 levers shifting the reels around depending on cassette size. The problem was easy to feel because when manually shifting the reels, the supply wheel felt "stuck". The reason for this was grease that got sticky over the long time the unit was stored without being used. As a consequence, the forces applied to move the reels bent some small other parts in the mechanism, so i had some fun taking all this small stuff apart, cleaning, applying new grease, forgetting to note the relation of 2 gears and then take another 2 hours to get them properly aligned that the rec inhibit switch moves correctly together with the reels. Besides the bent parts, the levers even jumped out of their actuator part.
The seller wrote, he ejected the tape after the unit was stored a long time and then the problems begun. I assume the grease was even more sticky when he did this, which can be the reason for all the follow-up damage.
All in all, not very hard to fix, if you have enough patience and are comfortable working with tiny parts :)
Remaining problems - L cassettes sometimes are ejected right after insertion and if you get the in, the takeup reel sometimes just stops, leading to jamming the tape enough before the E-6x is displayed, but in most cases, powering off an on can fix the situation. I assume there still are some problems with old grease irritating the torque regulation of the takeup reel.
So if you didn't throw away your 230 already, maybe that's a bit of help.
By the way - i recently also bought a DVCAM camcorder (Sony DSR-130P), which also had to struggle with reel speed problems in the beginning. That magically disappeared after some minutes and after recently recording a full hour and playing it back, i assume the problem is gone. Very likely also stuck grease in the mechanics. So at least here, it's not just Panasonic suffering the age.
Not to mention the 152 SMD capacitors i replaced in that JVC KY-27 camera, nearly 100 in the BVW-300P, all leaking and damaging the PCBs. From my statistics, this problem is especially common with build years 1989-1995. No leaking capacitors in Panasonic gear yet, no other issues found so far, so i didn't check their parameters yet. Non-SMD capacitor problems reach back more into the 1980s, especially in JVC gear. And interestingly, Panasonic electrolytic capacitors mainly fail in JVC gear :)
I did look at whether grease was a problem but I think it's gear damage on the cassette carriage. I have kept it and may look at it again. I get into a grease problem on my video about the Sony BVW-22P Betacam Player: th-cam.com/video/soGAs1HI57U/w-d-xo.html
@@video99couk In my case, the reel motors didn't take their correct positions, so the cassette spools didn't fit them, resulting in the problem that the cassette didn't completely go down. After reworking the reel shifting part, this worked fine. That was my first idea on your 230 also. If the reel is off by a mm or so, manually pushing might be enough force to snap it to the right position.
Besides some sporadically low torque von the takeup reel, my machine works great again. At least with the M DVCPRO tapes, no problem, the DVCAM tapes work, but i see that the tape slackens a bit from time to time where it goes back into the cassette. I think torque might require readjustment, but i still don't have a service manual, seems to be a firmware based setting.
@@MichaelKukat I believed that the reel positioning was the problem in my machine at first, pity it wasn't.
@@video99couk hm, bad :( But it was worth a try. Good luck, maybe you get it back to life one day. And keep up your great videos, very interesting!
Another great video.
Poor Colin, couldn't you get the Panasonic AJ-D250 DVCPro VTR working!?
Thanks for your thorough look into DVC Pro and it's various iterations. Several years ago I was using it with success, but now I find myself in need of reconnecting my Panasonic AJ-D230H machine to my Win10 computers, and I've had absolutely no luck. I would consider cannibalizing my old machines and the old video cards currently in storage, but would prefer not to (a lot of time and effort that might not pan out). Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!!
I don't think the DVCPRO port outputs a "standard" DV stream on most DVCPRO decks, so it won't work with a normal Firewire port. A few later models could also output a normal DV stream though. Perhaps send an email via my web site.
Hi there, I'm currently having this exact problem and was hoping you might have found a solution by now that you would be willing to share with me? Thanks so much
I need some advice I bought 2 dvcpro tape decks to play my panasonic mini dv tapes and capture to my pc.
First one I bought was the aj d230h the second was the aj d250 here is the problems the servo had problems and the tapes showed a lot of digital noise I cleaned both decks with a mini dv tape cleaner. It did not fix the problem. I'm not experienced in fixing tape decks . What deck would you recommend that's a work horse and durable ?
If you don't need to use DVCPRO, get a Sony DVCAM. They are more reliable. Some will even play (some sizes) of DVCPRO tapes. Not to say that DVCAM decks don't fail, I've had some die, but in general they are better than DVCPRO.
Hello I have one of these Panasonic doc pro machines. How do you hook them up to a tv?
There's a composite video output at the rear, you just need a BNC to phono cable to the yellow socket of your TV (assuming it has analogue inputs). There may be unbalanced phono "monitor" audio sockets at the back but if not you may need a quarter inch heaphone plug to twin phono cable for red and white audio inputs to TV.
LOL, you sure are right that Panasonic did NOT learn their lesson with MII. I have 6 DVC format machines and only one of them works properly. it also does not have a FireWire connector but I was able to find a rare SDI I/O board for it. With my DVCAM decks, on the other hand, they just seem to work, no mechanical issues and no capacitor issues, even with the lower end DSR-40.
Oh, and the DVCAM decks have a Firewire output that is identified by every editing program I have ever used because it conforms to the DV25 standard, the only gripe I have about the decks is the 4 pin "Mini Firewire" connector.
I also have an MII deck, what a nightmare to keep that thing running...Oh yeah and I MUST keep the top off and watch every transfer with that machine because it will eat a tape at the drop of a hat.
Some HDV decks replaced the mini Firewire connector with the much more robust large one. I had to replace a Firewire socket on a DSR-11 DVCAM once, I took one from a scrap camcorder. The MII format was such a bodge, the tape was too thin so it was easy to get into problems. Mould is also a very serious issue with these thin tapes. That said, my particular MII machine is actually quite reliable, it's not eaten any tapes since I fixed a fault with the cassette carriage a few years ago.
I used to online edit on mini-dv, and dvcpro and the tapes would always get eaten up... then leaped in to D5 world... My personal favorite HDSR!!!!
D5, isn't that a format consisting of just one machine? AJ-HD3700H. I've considered getting one just for laughs, but it's not likely that anyone actually has recordings stuck on these tapes because anyone who used D5 must have known that it was a dead-end and not an archive format. I gather that the BBC used D3 as an archive format for a while and deeply regretted it. Does the D5 machine play D3 too?
I worked on stuff for FOX and they had us outputting to D5. They even had stuff mastered to D1! We ended converting them mastered to HDSR, then LTO's, then finally PRORES files.
DV, DV LP, DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO P, HDV 1080i,HDV720p, HDV720p LP, DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO HD EX, and if you include formats using DV type codecs on different tape widths Digital 8 and Digital S (D9). I don't think the proposed D9 HD was ever actually launched. Did we really need all of those formats?
HDV used mpg2 long gop interframe encoding on a DV tape, not a DV codec at all.
Please, make a video about your HDCAM deck... and about the format 🙏
I'm not sure I want to pull my HDCAM deck apart. However I am still looking for an HDCAM-SR machine, as my HDCAM player doesn't support that format. If I get an HDCAM-SR then I will certainly feature the format, but at the moment machines like the Sony SRW-5500 seem to fetch serious money.
@@video99couk You don't need to... just show us the mecanism and talk about the format. I love how you explain things! Thank you for the channel. I'm from Brazil, so I probably will never use your services. But I certanly already admire your talent with electronics. Thanks!
Colin, are Panasonic's MII, DVCPro, DVCPro-50 and DVCPro-HD and JVC's Digital-S recorders unreliable?
I believe JVC Digital-S machines are fairly reliable. MII is crap. Most DVCPRO machines are crap but with some of the very last models (DVCPRO-HD) they may have got a handle on the capacitor problems.
At least your sons recognize that DVCPRO is a pain in the ass in terms of reliability.
Tapes would always get eaten in the machines... so many calls to our tech peeps.
A biiiiiig minus, it's not analog hi-fi sound like hi-fi VHS.😎😎
No, it's an all digital machine. The related D9 format though does have limited analogue sound capability.
Hi can this play both the 126 L and 33 and 66? help pleease!!!
I think all of the DVCPRO decks mentioned here will play all of those tapes, yes.