Okay, during day 2 of my ride-along with the fire department I popped in a new tape and shot about 12 minutes of b-roll and then went on a call. When I restarted the camera later the elapsed time and remainining time did not add up.
I finished the tape, loaded more and shot that too. When reviewing the tapes at home the first 10 minutes or so of the problem tape was solid blue-screen. When the image returned it was covered by 4 horizontal black bars. At times, those bars were replaced with frozen, pixelated images of the previous shot!
What happened??!! BTW the previous and subsequent tapes were fine (except the one shot where I forgot to turn on my new Azden mic) Geeez!

<<<-- Originally posted by Jim Wharton : ....... When reviewing the tapes at home the first 10 minutes or so of the problem tape was solid blue-screen. When the image returned it was covered by 4 horizontal black bars. At times, those bars were replaced with frozen, pixelated images of the previous shot!
What happened??!! BTW the previous and subsequent tapes were fine

Had this happen, had to throw the tape out. Has not happened again!

Jim,
Short answer: I don't really know what happened and doubt that anyone will be able to provide a definitive answer.

For what it's worth, here is my off-the-cuff speculation.

1. Contamination. Even though you used a new tape it's possible that something gunked the head from a previous roll. (Are you using differing brands of tape?) The new tape eventually wiped it clean and normal recording resumed. This is my best guess.

2. Tape path misalignment. It might be possible that the tape thread did not proceed precisely although not badly enough to trigger a "Remove Tape" message. Again, the tape managed to align itself during roll.

3. Alien invasion or act of terror?

<shrug>

I have no idea what happened, but I would like to see what you shot.

Thanks guys. Use only Panasonc tapes. I did run the Panasonic cleaning cassette prior to the first tape. Never saw anything like that before. Oh well....probably have to return for some pick-up shots.