Hi everyone,

Thought I'd share my troubles that I have recently faced with my XL1.

I had been down to Essex to record my friends 21st birthday party. I had had shot two tapes worth of footage (mostly with the camera on a tripod pointing at the dance floor). I noticed when swapping the tapes over that one of them did not register and the flashing eject message appeared in the view finder. I took it out and put it back in again and all was fine and so soon forgot about it.

When I finally got home two days later I started to capture all of the footage to an external hard disk. When I tried to replay the footage through the TV so a mate could watch it I noticed that I got the flashing eject message again but I took the tape out replaced it and it started working.

a week later the hard disk with the captured footage on it failed and I lost the lot... this prevented me from creating DVD's to take back down to essex with me so I could show everyone the party. I instead took the camera and the tapes with me so I could play it through the TV but as you have probably guessed both the tapes would no longer play... oh dear!!!

In a bit of a panic I put in a blank tape which worked fine but by now I was convinced that the tape mechanism was on the way out and booked the unit in for a service and told canon about the fault.

Canon came back to me and said that the tape mechanism needed replacing so i paid up and a few weeks later the unit came back nice and clean and looking lovely. Unfortunatly when I put the two offending tapes in they still wouldn't work.

To say the least I was gutted and not a little annoyed as I had just spent a considerable sum of money to get the tape mechanism replaced and it seems that I wasn't necessary.

However not one to be defeated I decided to open up the tapes to see if anything was jammed but I couldn't see anything at all. Curiosity got the better of me and I put the tape back into the camera and would you believe it the damn thing worked!!!!

A quick operation on the other tape fixed that too.

I have no idea what was wrong so I offer it up to you all for explaination

Cheers

Nick

That's a bit strange indeed. Perhaps the tape was moved slightly
in the vertical position. The XL1S can be quite picky at which
tapes it likes or doesn't. A DV deck (VCR) is usually much better
at working around small tape differences. I'm glad you all sorted
it out!

Hi,

I'm keen to get a tape deck primarly to avoid excessive wear on the camera, could you recommend any to me?

Cheers

Nick

Yes, any cheap miniDV cam.

The little Sony video walkmans are good but are a little expensive. Failing that as Frank has mentioned you could use a cheap(ish) MiniDV camera - but then again you might come across the same problem with it.

Nick: I don't have any experience with decks myself. So I cannot
recommend any to you. But the topic has been discussed
multiple times here already, so try a search!

Will do, thanks for all the suggestions everyone

I was thinking about buying a MiniDV deck to save wear and tear, but a friend suggested spending the xtra money to purchase a DVCam deck. That way, I will already have it whenever I decide to purchase a DVCam camcorder. Plus you can still play MiniDV tapes on a DVCam deck. I can't afford to buy one right now, so in the meantime I bought a DV winder to save wear and tear.

Hi,

the Dv winder sounds interesting can I ask you where you purchased it from?

Cheers,

Nick

I don't know anything about the DV Winder except for what I've read, and that is it can be hard on your tapes and the end of the rewind, because it doesn't slow down when it's near the end of the rewind (or fast-forward). Can anyone varify this?

Sima makes an inexpensive mini DV winder (I don't recall the price, but it's tens of dollars, not hundreds). I've used it for two years with no problems or damage to tape.

Forgot to mention, it does not slow down at the end, but it doesn't stress my tapes either.

I bought mine from B&H in New York. I haven't had any problems. Mine cost around $45 and it's nice to have, rather than using my cameras.