Thread: Correcting sliced frames from low light footage

Hi

I've recently got the film editing bug again, after volunteering to shoot a secret reunion gig at a local venue last weekend (probably bit off more than I can chew, feel all responsible I should get the best out of what was taped).

I'm going through my footage from the headline act and in my third clip I have nearly a second where the image is sliced horizontally, a bit like a pack of cards that has been split where they alternate the image more to the left, more to the right, and so on for about 18 frames.

As it was fairly dark I imagine it was this that made it just lose the joined-up ness of the image, guessing there is a correct term for this fault I don't know because of my amateur approach, but like interlacing except the slices are about a cm apart and also out of step. Might be okay as an effect if it wasn't just this 1 second, and I was shooting Max Headroom or Nathan Barley, not in the middle of a song by a major skate/punk/hardcore band from mid 80s.

Is there a video effect in PP2 that will join the lines up properly?

thanks,
Adele

It looks like dirty heads on your camcorder caused that, have you used a cleaning tape recently? How old is the camcorder you are using? Would it be possible to just cut that part out using PP2. It doesn't have anything to do with shooting in low light.

I agree. Sounds like dirty heads. Run a tape head cleaner through it a couple fo times and try recapturing the footage. It may be recorded ok on tape.

Thanks guys Didn't consider that and ironically I was sold a tape head cleaner when I bought a 5 pack of miniDV tapes last weekend, ran it a couple of times and trying to capture the footage again to see if the recorded tape is okay. I haven't used my Canon mv630i a lot since I bought it 4 years ago, maybe about 10-12 hours, but last weekend I used it for 4-5 hours. I'll find out in a few minutes if it worked

When you purchase a tape head cleaner in the little card insert it advises you to only run it once for about 10 to 12 seconds and then take it out.

The card in mine said for 20-30 seconds. Anyway, I re-caputured the footage and sub clipped it and the problem was no longer evident so they did need a clean. I'd edit the subject title to make it easier on any newbies searching but apparently you can't do that, oh well. I had some ideas for story boarding the footage so plan on doing that later in the day. Some of the clips are on my youtube page if you're interested.