Problem with XM2 - Please help

[pauljuhn]

I have been shooting our church's service for 5 months.
We have 2 XM2's and recently one of our XM2 behaved strangely.
1.Three weeks ago, the camera lost power while in its standby mode.
so it lost date/time info.
I thought this was normal when the button battery was due to replace.
But after that incident, it works OK without replacing the battery.

2.Last sunday, I was completely shocked when I played back the tape to capture the video.
For First 6 minutes, it did not record anything at all - no time code at all.
After a while, it recorded scenes but it recorded badly like 6 stripes had one scence another 6 stripes shows dirrerent scene! and the sound was horrible too.
and also it shows some blank(no time code) as well.
then the screen becomes gradually better and the rest of 30 minute was recorded OK.
I used brand new tape.....

Was this a tape problem? or Head problem?
DO I need to give it to service(Yes, it is still under warranty)
Our service is being televised after editing every sunday morning.
I can't afford not to have camera!

Please help!

Paul J.

[DV_Ed]

Run a tape head cleaner through it for 10 seconds. See if this helps. Also have you suddenly changed tape brand? That may be the cause.

Ed