Well, now it's my turn to complain about the dirt.

I'm pretty sure my problem is because of dust on the head (hope so). But every single time I used the camera now I see stripes in my video. And somtimes it just records "blue" and you can see the video if you fastforwad. Crazy man!! Does this camera get dirty this esaly? This is major if I am doing an event. Anyone else have these problems?

I have ran the head cleaning tape like 4 times. I let it play for 10 seconds. I never rewind the cleaning tape. And then the stripes come right back.

I'm also seeing this red thing flash in the upper left of the screen when I record sometimes. I can not find it in the manual.

I've hardy been outside with this cam, and only have about 10 hours on it. I've had a cheap Hi8 cam for 3 years and never had this problem.

I think I figured it out guys. I remember recording over somthing on a tape and I think that did it. Never had any trouble before that. I think that is why everyone stesses to always use new tapes.

was gonna ask what tapes r u using, as new tapes wont have this problem..

ive got an old tape which i recorded over about 4 times and i get dropouts which jump back to the first thing that was recorded...

One other thing to note, is to always FF and RR the tape before you record on it.
This allows the cam to set up the tension of the tape spool in accordance with the cam own motor tension... (basically when you FF then RW, the tension of the cam will be what the tape would be set to)

This allows for smoother tape transport with a zero "tape off the shelf and out of the box" tension level