Wavy effect on tapes after head replacement - Sony Hi8

[Hitsu]

I have few 8mm tapes shot on a HI8 Sony Handycam (don’t remember the exact model) back in 2001. After recording 2 and a half tapes the camera went dead and I had the head replaced in a certified Sony center. I do not have that camera anymore.

Back in 2006 I bought a Sony TRV350 Digital8 camcorder. When playing back the tapes captured after the head was replaced once in a while I get a ripple/wavy effect in the video (see screenshots). Audio is just fine. I see the waves/ripples on the camera and on the PC while capturing the footage over firewire. The effect sometimes lasts a fraction of a second, sometimes 2-3 seconds and are always at the same position on the tape. I captured those tapes back in 2006 and just few days ago on the same TRV350 camcorder and the ripple effect looks exactly the same in both cases.

Those ripples come in and go, often there is around 15-20 minutes of fine video without them, then I see them again.

Tapes captured prior to the head replacement or recorded on a different Sony camcorder do not have this.

Any idea what is going on? Maybe when the head was replaced, it was not aligned correctly? Or maybe there is an issue with the TRV350 I have ?

[dellsam34]

Are footages of the same tape, same section prior to head replacement do not exhibit this behavior? From your post sounds like a tape issue but then you said prior to replacing the head look normal but did not mention if the same tapes and the same faulty spots looked fine.

[Hitsu]

Footage captured on that HI8 camera prior to the head replacement do not exhibit this behavior. Tapes 1 and 2 and first 40 minutes of tape 3 do not have any waves. Camera died after recording around 40 minutes on tape 3.

After the head was replaced I continued recording on tape 3. Only footage captured after the head replacement exhibit this behavior. Footage on tape 3 (after 40 minutes), tapes 4, 5 … have the ripples.

I am trying to get an idea if this is a tape issue or maybe an issue with the Sony TRV350 camera I am using to playback those tapes.

Will an investment in another camera resolve the issue and the ripples will be gone or maybe the ripples have been recorded onto the tapes (as a result of a wrongly aligned head ??? ) and the result will be the same no matter what other device I use.

[dellsam34]

If the ripple is consistent on every second of the recorded footage with the new head, then it's camcorder related, therefore the footage is ruined and cannot be recovered even with another camcorder. Since this camcorder plays back other tapes with no problem, this indicates that the fault is with the recording section of the camcorder, it may not be the head itself but something happened to the recording section during the head replacement.

[cibo]

This may help you salvage the damaged footage: https://github.com/rsnitsch/vhs-deshaker/releases/
It won't fix the chroma issues, but at least fix the jaggued edges.