hi8 tapes not playing right

[youngmomma]

i have some tapes i previously recorder with my sony-handycam and now have a samsung scl 700 ans at first it played them woth just a lil fuzz and would play new recordings fine now no recordings work without complete lines and fuzz and no sound.. the dry clean tape helped eliminate the fuzz before but now there is no change also some tapes play in superfast mode sound and picture?? are my tapes damaged or is it the camera?


if i transfer them somehow or take them somehwhere to be restored will my tapes be ok?? i dont wnat to lose my movies... please help any advice is greatly appreciated.. ps is my playing them in this camera messing up or permanatly damaging my tapes?) thanks

[zoobie]

I'd first take the cam and a few problem tapes down to your local shop and see if they play OK on another camera. Offhand, sounds like the cam is shot...

[filmboss80]

It is a tracking issue, with tape not being properly aligned with the playback head. Most VCRS had tracking controls, but camcorders never did. (For that matter, neither did Hi-8 player units, as I recall.) It is a very tricky process to open up the camcorder and manually adjust the skew in the tape path. (I had to do that once with some home videos shot in the '90s, and it worked; but after I made the transfers, I had to have the camcorder serviced to get the alignment back to factory settings.)

Good luck.