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General discussion

Problems playing back some Hi-8 tapes on my Sharp camcorder

Feb 13, 2011 4:21AM PST

I have a VL-AH151U Sony Camcorder. We transfer video on Hi-8 tapes onto DVD for friends. Some tapes play back fine and some tape; which the owner swears there is footage on; is snow throughout with no audio. We take the tape out and play another tape and everything works again. What can we do?

Discussion is locked

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Re: snow
Feb 13, 2011 4:23AM PST

Not really clear if it's a Sony or a Sharp you have. Anyway, all you can do is try another camcorder and if that fails also declare the video and the audio as "gone" and "lost". Those things happen.

Kees

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Problems with Hi8 tapes not playing on a Sony Handicam
Jul 2, 2011 11:16AM PDT

I have a similar situation. I have tapes that previously played and now don't. It's like they don't register. The tape is advancing/playing/FF and REW but the counter does not respond, nor is there a picture or sound. Just a blue screen. There are about 4 or 5 out of about 20 tapes that do this. A couple tapes do make the counter advance and a couple don't even seem to do anything, even though the spindles are rotating (but the tape itself never snaps or locks up). It's just weird and I'd like to know what I can do to get these tapes to work again. Everything has been replayed at least once before this happened to these tapes. And I can't find anything online about this problem to find a solution. Please, help!

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Yes you can find out about it.
Jul 2, 2011 2:09PM PDT

What I find is that most don't want to know that it's usually too expensive to fix. Try the usual head cleaning and HOPE. If not shop for another camcorder to step in to play the content and final advice.

DO NOT LEAVE CONTENT on this media.
Bob