Ok, I'm having a problem with playback of this tape on my GL2. It's MiniDV, and the tape brand is Maxell. I know this isn't the type of brand I'm supposed to use, but I had to go on an important shoot at very late notice and as such didn't have time to do anything but stop at Walgreen's. It looks like this came back to haunt me, so to speak.

Anyway, when I play back the tape, I get weird glitches like the one depicted in the attached frame. I've run several head cleaners through the camera, but the problem remains.

Is there any way to actually repair the tape/footage, or am I out of luck?

You're stuck.

If you can look through each frame and toss out only the bad ones, you may be able to duplicate enough of the good frames to build a sequence long enough for you to use. But it'll be time consuming and a crapshoot.

Looks like the tape got hit with a nasty magnetic field (did the cashier run it over the security wipe at the checkout??) or it was just a bad lot tape -- it's amazing that more tapes dont come out bad; goes to show the manufacturers are pretty good at quality control.

If the glitches are at exactly the same place every playback, you are likely stuck because they are probably a problem with the material recorded to the tape. If they move around, never the same frame twice, you may be able to recover by trying multiple captures, and doing some frame/by frame editing.

Sometimes you can recover somewhat using analog capture of playback from the camcorder because it has additional error correction in the analog output stream.

What you see is the reason folks often recommend running a cleaning tape before changing brands of tape, and why some folks suggest not recording anything important on the first minute of the tape (this part appears to have a history of more problems.

Maxell brand tape should be about as god as any moderate cost tape, but bad lots do happen..