ok, I went and shot some video today of go-kart racing. I got excited to play the footage, opend FCP, and started to capture, at first I was just watching and waiting to set an out point, and all of a sudden the color bars came up, even though the video was playing and I could see the picture on the camera.
I stopped it, rewond and played again, same thing.
So i decide to capture, it started "batch capture" and then stopped after 4 sec's. the error message said there was something wrong with the tape.
I also tried the tape in my XL2, same thing.
So I then grabbed another blank tape from the same package, recorded a few minutes of footage and did the same thing, once again the same error happend, the wierd part is it also didn't capture any audio, however every few secs, I can hear loud crackling and static?

I played some tapes that I know work, and they did, would "bad" tapes cause this, I am worried now, because I needed this footage, now I have to re-shoot.
Can the firestore record without a tape in the deck?

Yes the firestore can record with no tape in it. In the menu set it to dv and set the Firestore to tapeless operation.

any ideas on whats wrong with the camera?

Sorry I have no idea. I recently purchased my camera, and have shot about 2hrs on tape. I then got a Firestore and haven't touched the tapes since.

Sorry
Chris