Playback Canon Mini-DV on a Samsung?

Question

I had a videographer tape on his Canon cameras and now I get artifacting and choppy audio when I play back on my Samsung camcorder. Anything I can do? Thanks.

Answer 1

It's a sad fact of electronics life that devices that should be compatible are not. No where is that more apparent than in the video field, where tapes recorded on one device simply do not play on a machine manufactured by a different company. I work in the educational broadcast TV field and have had that problem ceaselessly with tapes recorded on the Canon XL1-S Mini-DV camera that absolutely will NOT play on either of our THREE JVC SR-VS30U SVHS/Mini DV playback decks. To underscore the point, I've tried --just to satisfy my curiousity --- to play back tapes recorded on one of the XL-1's on one of the two other identical units we use. Some times they're fine -- other times they pixellate, drop audio and have horizontal gray bars in the image. (And in case you were wondering we use brand new tapes most of the time). I agree with the previous answer; I see the best solution here is having the program creator provide you with the content in some sort of digital format. I keep a 250-gig external drive handy for that purpose.

Answer 2

Try adjusting the tape speed settings. If he shot in LP and your playing in SP or vice versa, the video will appear choppy. Also, sometimes even changing the play mode wont work, and only the originial camera that it was shot on will play it. In that case, ask him to transfer all the video to a external hard drive or a disk (if he hasnt done so yet), but if he has already edited everything for you, and you dont really plan on doing anything with the original anyways, then dont do this, as it will just be a pretty big waste of time. Hope this helps!