Hi, one of our freelancers had a camera inside overnight with air conditioning. Then in the morning, he took the system out into the Florida heat. I think what happened was a condensation problem. The first tape caused a dew light. He didn't realize this and the tape eventually ejected. So he put in another tape and it quickly got stuck for good.

Now we have this camera that the EJECT will not work, in fact it doesn't even light up when pushed and the tape is not 100% threaded.

My question is how do I go about at least removing this tape?

Damage to the mech will be the next thing, but I want the tape out. In the past with larger formats, you could cycle a motor belt to get the threading started. But I see no readily accessable motors or belts.

Thanks

Daveb

You should take it to JVC or a local JVC authorized service centre. This is probably a common issue with tape-based camcorders that any technician (even non-JVC) will be familiar with.

Thanks Tim, I know I should tape it to a authorized JVC repair center.

But I have a hammer! Let's go to it!

I opened up the tape compartment, and removed the two screws on the tape compartment door. The lid slides down and off. The metal carriage that holds the tape was flopping back and forth and a gentle push revealed that the door would not shut. (This is the assembly just below the part with the rubber tab) Luckily I have another HD100, so I opened up the other camera's door and examined the way the carriage works. By carefully comparing the two, I could see there are three areas where the top of the carriage assembly hooks over the outer door assembly. These were unhooked, allowing the broken transport to flop around. I pushed these three hooks back over the door assembly and then the transport would close properly and the tape began to thread. I did a bunch of tests, FF, RW, rec, DV, HDV ect and everything is now fine. Luckily, when the carriage came unhooked, the tape was in but threading had not begun. I trashed that tape anyway.

So it is possible for a user to fix a flopping tape carriage. :)