Posted by Richard Crowley on 06/02/06 18:25

raida4life wrote ...
> I bought 4 different players and had to return each as every time I
> changed the settings either I got no sound or intermittent sound
> playback. Each time I tried this I played them back and made sure the
> cables weren't loose. I just wonder if this is all due to the fact that
> I am using RCA jacks to try and retreive the audio and video from these
> tapes. I am concerned that I may get other recordings like this from
> Mini DV tapes in the future, and that the tapes may not be able to be
> played back because this is a problem with Mini DV technology.

Millions of people use miniDV technology every day without
any of those kinds of problems. There does not appear to be
any kind of fundamental "problem with Mini DV technology".

You will get little practical help here unless you start giving
specifics like make/model, etc. "4 different players" means
nothing to us.

> I have camcorder equipment that can playback 8mm, Digital 8 tapes and
> even VHS C, but I have only experienced this problem with Mini DV. I
> will try the firewire option as someone suggested. I guess it is time I
> got with the times.

You will most certainly get better results from a direct digital
connection (via Firewire) than you can with any kind of analog
capture. But whether this will remedy your ongoing problems
with 12-bit vs. 16-bit seems doubtful.

Frankly, I've never heard any one else experience such problems.
Few people use 12-bit, and then only by accident, and only once.
It was a marketing gimmic and turned out to be of little practical
use. Stick with 16-bit like 99.9999% of the rest of the world.

> One thing I noticed is that several camera manuals indicate that
> you can only playback 16 bit audio recordings in 12 bit audio
> mode.

What kind of cameras are you talking about? Cite name and
model numbers, please. This makes no sense at all. Furthermore,
most equipment automatically switches upon playback to the
format used to record the tape.

> In many cases when I tried to change the settings on most of
> these cameras they would not let me change the Audio to 16 bit.

Give us some specifics. Else any practical help will be impossible.
Do you mean "change the settings" before recording? What does
"not let me" mean?

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