Old Mini DVs are breaking my cameras!

Perryj86 · #1 (**permalink**) 03-31-2008, 10:53 PM

This is a huge problem and it's beginning to get incredibly frustrating!

About four years ago I owned a Canon DV600 Mini DV camera and one day it decided to stop working. It wouldn't playback whatever had been recorded onto the tape, the time counter would remain static one rewinding and it made out as if the tape was completly blank even thought there was in fact a recording on there, be it a few weeks old or a few seconds old. The camera was ruined, it refused to playback.

About a year ago, once again in need of a Mini DV camera I bought a Samsung VP-D361 which is very similar to the Canon I had previously. I've had this camera for a while now and it's been totally satisfactory, a complete joy and a lot like the Canon once was. Moments ago, out of pure curiousity, I decided to try this out again to see if it was in fact the tapes that were the original cause of the breakdown. I inserted one of the tapes that I'd used with the old Canon into the newer Samsung and low and behold the same behaviour.
The play back twitched for a couple of pixelated seconds before displaying nothing but a blue screen. I then re-inserted the newer tape I've been happily recording onto in the past few weeks and that's playing back as a blank blue screen too. This has literally happened since inserting my old mini DV tape.

I'd really, truly appreciate any help in solving this problem because it's ridiculous and inconvenient to once again have to buy another new camera to fix the problem, when all I've done is try to view a fully compatible tape that's a couple of years older. I'm sure the cause of the poisonous tape might be something like exposure to magnets at some point but I'm really more interested in restoring my playback back to normal, and I'm not entirely convinced a head-cleaner is going to do the trick. When I switch the camera to "Camera" everything displays as normal on the preview screen. I press Record and it records, I press Stop and it stops. But as soon as I switch to "Player" to review what I've just recorded - Bluescreen and no playback.

Has anyone ever had this problem before? Please help me! I can't afford to keep buying new cameras. And I won't be letting my curiosity ruin another perfectly good camera again.

Team Man · #2 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 04:57 PM

Had the same thing happen just recently on a Sony D8 camera that I use for archiving, I couldn't try the tapes on another camera or machine because all my other equipment is MiniDV so in the end I put a head cleaning tape in it and "Bingo", problem solved.

Don't run a cleaning tape more than 10secs.