Need advice on possible dirty MiniDV cassette

[LWong]

Hey guys,

So I have this MiniDV cassette which is about 3-4 years old and has since collected a little bit of dust. For Christmas, I received a new camera and the first thing I did was play this tape; the entire video had gray and purple horizontal bars, shown in the image I uploaded with this post. I put in a new tape and got the same results. The gift-giver returned the camera, so I can't do anymore tests on it to determine if the camera or the tape is faulty.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what is causing the problems and any possible solutions? Thanks for reading.

video%20problem.png

[nwo]

Was the original tape recoded in LP mode?

Try running the tape till the end rewind it, and use a cleaning tape on the camcorder, and see if it works after that.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Classic symptoms of a dirty head (the drum has two hence two sets of bands). Or misaligned.

Was the first tape to be played in the new camcorder the dusty one? If so, it may have contaminated the head. Does "new" mean "new"? If so, can you exchange it? It's possible the heads were messed up already (though unlikely). After all, if this problem showed on the very first tape you attempted to play, you can't be sure that it was the tape.

If you try a cleaning tape, follow the instructions carefully especially regarding how long to run the tape for (10 seconds is common).