mini DV tapes in different camcorders help

calmspirit

Hi
I had a sony handycam DCR PC101 which broke last year, at christmas I bought a JVC GR DA20 from asda...only £114 which considering people were quoting 70 + to look at my sony was a good price ...I thought!

I obviously have lots of tapes (mini dv) which I recorded on the sony (lots of tapes of my kids growng up!most recent 1 year ago) I had thought that the JVC camera would play these tapes allowing me to transfer to my PC.....but for some reason they wont play....they come on very briefly showing a brief picture with squares....like the picture is being cut up and shown in hundreds of small disjointed squares...if you get what I mean?!

I really want to view these old tapes ...any ideas anyone? are they just not compatible or could it be the way they were recorded on sony? eg speed?

thanks for any advice

calmspirit

shameless bump !

anyone help?

thanks

imho

Can you not put the tapes on to a dvd disk ? I bought a dvd recorder and connected it to my video player and put all my cam corder tapes onto Dvds now.
Thats if your little cam corder tapes are the same as mine ? the ones that go into a normal size video tape .

calmspirit

thanks imho but mini dv tapes will not fit into a video player....I know what you mean though as I have done this with my (even older) VHC tapes......it will be such a shame not to be able to retrieve my videos .

imho

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080101122700AAZx0Z4
Not sure if that helps. Maybe your have to pay a shop to do it for you,but as you got a lot of tapes it will cost a lot.If it was me i would put a advert in my local paper to see if someone has the cam corder as your broken one, and see if they will let you borrow it.

BigBouncyBall

i don't want to worry you but this might be bad news, the tapes might have got corrupted. Have they been near any magnets or in a moist environment?

I'd go to a professional video editing shop, or someone that can put video onto DVD etc and see if they can recover the footage etc. Jessops might be able to suggest someone or put you in touch with someone who can help.

weegie.geek

I've heard of problems with using tapes (and certain brands of tapes) in different brands of camera, due to the different lubricants used.

http://thedvshow.com/faq-pro/index.php?action=article&cat_id=017&id=194 wrote:

But the big no no is the "mixing" of different brands/types of tape. For instance, say you have been using Panasonic miniDV tapes, then you pop in a Maxell or Sony. Then you throw in a TDK, and so on. Each tape has a lubricant which rubs off onto the cam's heads, and when you mix tapes, these lubricants may interact causing your heads to gum up. The typical result is drop-outs; and if the heads are very dirty, you'll see diagonal, mosaic-like bars in your viewing screen.

calmspirit

update !

cheap JVC camera broke so I returned it to Asda for full refund...and bought a Sony camera from Argos ...a cheap one.......and hey presto all my old tapes work !
I had resigned myself to all my old tapes were corrupted and I would never see them again......but weegie you were on the right track it seems !
So people be warned ...... better by far to keep with same make camera!

I am happy happy ...all I need now is a new DVD drive on my pc to transfer them all to DVD's !

thanks all for input/advice