Over the past couple weeks, we’ve had intermittent (my favorite) issues with one of our cameras — the signal would start getting jumpy and eventually go back to normal after a few seconds.  It looked just like someone had unplugged the genlock connection and put it right back.

I finally had a chance to take a look at it today, and I was able to get a nice glimpse of the problem with my camera:

See how the copper in the center of the left connector is flared out?  That’s the camera’s genlock connection, and most-likely where our issue is.

I found a small needle-nosed pliers and closed the copper up as best I could… it’s looking a little better now.

I thought about getting in there with a small soldering tip and dripping some solder on that copper to brace it a little.  Going in there makes me a little nervous though.  See that white at the back of the connector?  That’s plastic.  I don’t really want to risk melting it, or worse, accidentally shorting the connector out.

So far, the camera is passing all the stress-tests (or different wire-wiggling techniques) that I’m subjecting it to, so I’m feeling good about this being the cause of our signal issues.  We’ll see in a couple weeks…