problem digitizing HDV footage

I have always digitized SD footage via firewire to Premiere CS3 using a Sony HVR-15 player without problems.
But when I have to digitize HDV footage using the same Sony player, I notice later that the digitized footage has some points with missing frames in the video, and that ahead this point the audio becomes out of sync. And this happens several times along the footage.
I use Premiere with a Matrox RT.X2 LE card, but currently I楹搈 using the firewire connected directly to my PC, because my breakout box is out of order and I sent it to Matrox for replacement.
Any help?

problem digitizing HDV footage

I would guess it is that your tape path in your camera or the player is dirty.?This is the same symptom that I had playing back HDV tapes.?I had to manually find where the tape would go out of sync and then examine each frame in that area.?I finally found several red frames but beacuse it was not a GOP interval it did not show up on the capture as a missing frame.?HDV is different than DV in this regard.?It was a real pain to search and find these spots in the tape and then resynchronize the audio.?After one or more head cleanings in my two cameras the problem was gone.

problem digitizing HDV footage

Hi Bill Gehrke,

When you say, ''After one or more head cleanings in my two cameras the problem was gone,'' were you using your cameras for play back in your capture process? and this is why you needed to clean your camera heads? I have the same problem, only I'm using a SONY GV-HD700 tape deck. I guess I'll need to clean the head on my tape deck a few times.

In general it is good practice to clean heads when:

a. you get dropped frames, or

b. you change tape brands.

It is an absolute myth that using cleaning tapes will shorten the life span of the heads, unless you really get far more than 10000 hours of use on that deck/camera.

magicmel, yes I have to use one of my cameras for playback It seems everytime I start considering a tape deck a new camera always wins out.?I try always using my second camera on shoots that require two cameras for my playback camera?It was not a playback problem as I swapped cameras and the problem stayed in the same place on the tape.?I do not know why but both cameras developed missing frames on the same shoot, fortunately it was not at the same instant so I had good footage always from one.