Do your MiniDV Tapes suffer from Digital Pixelation – Dropout?

Have you played your MiniDV camcorder tapes lately and noticed large rectangular pixels onscreen?

Clean your Heads

These rectangular pixels on your Mini DV can result from a couple of things. Videotape camcorders and cameras utilize a tape transport system with a video drum and video heads. If the video head in your camcorder has a tiny particle of dust or dirt, this debris will prevent the camera from recording a clean video signal on tape. As a result, when you playback your Mini DV tape, you will notice digital pixelation.

These pixels can be avoided beforehand by cleaning the head of the camera with tape cleaner or a piece of clean white paper dipped in Isopropyl Alcohol. This should be done approx every 10-15 tapes as well as every few months. This will prevent digital pixelation from being recorded on your Mini DV tape or other type of videotape. While this will prevent digital pixelation from being recorded it will not remove existing digital pixelation which is recorded on tape.

Another likely culprit is a dirty playback head which (fortunately) can be cleaned; thus, removing digital pixelation and allowing a clean playback and video tape transfer.

Many times playback will be glitchy and will glitch when you play the miniDV tape in the wrong type of camcorder or camera. The MiniDV tape was used in a variety of different camera and formats. MiniDV, DV, DVCAM, and HDV are just a few. Thus, there are different pixel aspect ratios such as 720x480i 4×3, 720x 480i 16×9 letterbox, 720x480i widescreen, 1440x1080i HD Widescreen, 1920x1080i Widescreen. Furthermore, there are different recording speed (SP and LP) that not all decks and cameras can play. As a result, you may be playing the tape back in the wrong camera, camcorder or deck.

AV Workshop, has all the different decks and camcorders needed to playback any miniDV tape! We have rescued many many customers cherished home movies that they thought were corrupt. Recently, we save a customers miniDV tapes that he had already had transferred to DVD by two other companies, South Tree / Legacy Box and Costco. Both of those companies failed to produce glitch free DVDs. We transferred his tapes using the proper playback cameras with success! We transferred his DV tapes to both Digital mp4 files and DVDs. Here is his review.

Read M H.‘s review of Audio Video Workshop on Yelp

At AV Workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area we use professional video tape decks which our technicians maintain to the highest standards. Our technicians thoroughly clean the drums and heads of the tape decks to assure proper playback and digitizing of your video tapes.

Maximize your Bitrate

Furthermore, AV Workshop customizes each video transfer by using custom bitrates to allow maximum resolution, minimizing digital pixelation. Digital pixelation can occur when less than ideal bitrates are selected. For example, 8.0 or 9.0 mbps is the maximum bitrate allowed on a DVD. While this is the maximum bitrate allowed on a DVD for an mpeg-2 video under 1 hour, many other companies (mainly camera stores and big box stores) use 2 hour default settings which compresses the video quality by encoding the video at 4.0 mbps. As a result, video to DVD transfers done at big box stores like Costco, or LegacyBox etc… end up looking highly compressed and pixelated.

Here at AV Workshop in Redwood City of the San Francisco Bay Area, we manually digitize and enhance your home movies customizing every Video to DVD Transfer by using custom bitrates to allow maximum quality with no digital pixelation. For more info and pricing on Local Video to DVD Transfers within the San Jose / San Francisco Bay Area, please check out our website below or Click Here

Audio Video Workshop is located in Redwood City of the San Francisco Bay Area
650-369-4366