On Sun, 05 May 2002 00:10:56 GMT, Erik Harris wrote:

>On Sat, 4 May 2002 20:48:39 -0230, "Chris" wrote:
>
>>Personally, using cheap gear, I've seen maybe 10-15% of the tapes go bad
>>with multiple passes of the record heads and play heads. I've seen very few
>>simply "go bad" and degrade that quickly, indeed, to the best of my
>>knowledge, I've seen none go bad on the shelf (Yet... maybe I've just been
>>lucky).
>
>I wouldn't consider the PC100 "cheap gear," though it's certainly much
>cheaper than the gear many people in here use.
>
>>Have you tried any other tapes in the camera? Perhaps it's bad heads?
>
>Yep. As I mentioned in the original post, I had used two tapes, and this one
>tape exhibited the problem twice - the first time, ejecting the tape and
>re-inserting it fixed the problem. The second time (yesterday), nothing
>seemed to fix the problem (including recording new data). The other tape has
>not exhibited any of these problems, and a third time I've sinced used to
>replace the apparently-bad tape hasn't yet exhibited any problems.

This indicates to me that it is a single bad tape.
Once one of these is discovered, I *never* play it
again, since the high-speed Mini-DV little heads
clog easily, and damaged tape can clog heads...
If you must play it, I would first wind it fully
to the end, then rewind it fully to the beginning.
I would then fast-forward it slightly, begin playback
(preferably with another camera FireWire-conected
and recording a copy), and see if playback is OK.
If not, and fast-forwarding to a later spot on
the tape does not result in successful playback,
the tape should be considered lost. It *may* be
advisable to use a Sony cleaning tape BRIEFLY after
the playback attempt...