*** Sorry for the 'handle' this is an old one from back in summer of last year ***

Anywho... I just did a wedding and now all the footage is REALLY screwed up. The link at the bottom shows some pics of the footage... but it's weird... it looks like either a head alignment or tracking problem since the top of the image is at the bottom and I've tried running a cleaning tape through just to see what'd happen and nothing... but the weird thing is, when I fast forward, rewind, or pause it, the image looks perfectly fine (besides normal distortion during FF and Rewind)... anybody know what the problem is? And if I need to send it to Canon to get fixed will I loose the footage (saying that it is a head alignment problem)??

Pics of Footage:
http://www.geocities.com/suike5/xl1.htm


Please help!!
Jared
suike@excite.com

Well, that's not normal, from what you describe, so if it were me I'd get it fixed.

Try playing the tape back on another camera. If it plays the same way, I suspect you had a partially clogged head during recording. If that is the case their is nothing you can do. It doesn't really look like tape path alignment or head alignment, but you never know until you start working on it.

A couple of additional questions:

1. Was this a virgin tape?

2. Have you swapped tape brands w/o running a pass of tape cleaner before loading the new tape?

3. Since running the cleaner, have you been able to repeat the problem.

4. Was this happening at the beginning of the shot?

It is also possible it was a bad tape. I still have one that will not load into my XL-1. Its the only one I have that won't load too.

I had exactly the same problem in Mexico with a recording. It did exactly the same. As you played it was as if part of image remained and ghosted over next few frames and continued.

I cleaned heads and all and it was still not doing anything. I thought that it was just bad moisture on tape from very high humidity, but the tape was the same on other machines. The camera played back old tapes fine, but as soo as you recorded it did exactly how your picture looks. I took it to Sony repair centre in Mexico and it was fixed and worked good as new. I cannot remember exactly what it was but something to do with recording head or a head pin/clip or something not quite right. But I was fixable and nothing major. Cleaning heads did nothing to solve it. So rather than risk perhaps damage or abrasion on heads I would just get it sorted at repair centre!