Video and audio play back is choppy

take the lense cap off

Hello, this problem is because of the nature of previously recorded signal. The recording made in an older way (mono) has a separate head and the solution for your problem can be to clean the head. This head has two functions, for control pulses and audio signal. If you need more info please advice. Arpi

It is possible that the camcorder was off use and resulted in drop of values in the servo sections. First of all open the tape door section and do a good cleaning of the audio/control head . See if any dirt had accumulatted onthe heads, be verry careful to clean or use a good quality cleaning tape. Check and see if your old tapes are tight , rewind and forward before playing stored tapes. If this wont solve the choppy playing, thenit is possible that the servo section of the camcorder needs attention. Get help if not familiar as it needs experience to open and probe, but this can also be very expensive. Hope you try the cleaning first. Good day

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I am having the same probelms, and I would appreciate any help with this since I am shooting a childrens camp and I am fairly isolated and don't have the time to swop cameras or send it to get fixed. I need to know if the recording is fine (video and audio) but the playback is not working correctly...or is it not recording correctly or playing back correctly. The sound cuts out from time to time in playback. Thank you.

Check the following link. Call them and explain the symptoms and they should send shipping label to you so you can send the camcorder in for repair. I had my TRV38 repaired in about 2 weeks. Good luck.

esupport.sony.com/perl/news-item.pl?mdl=DCRTRV19&news_id=95


this is a known issue with Sony

I was having the exact same problems, and I read a post on this website somewhere recommending that I just record a few seconds of video on a blank portion of tape and then the camera should start playing video normally again.

I tried it, and IT WORKED!!

Canon camcorders have a non-standard head position. Borrow a panasonic or samsung camcorder (those two are compatible) and backup your casettes on dvds. If you want them to be on minidv readable on canon camcorder, connect it afterwards and send video to minidv through your camcorder. It will then be alligned the way that suites your gear.

Either that or go to the professional service that does conversion from minidv tapes. That usually costs around 15$ per hour, so if you have 10 or more hours of video, the less expensive way is buying an entry model of panasonic camcorder.

The fact that both inputs give you a bad recording indicates its something common to both inputs. First thing I would do is try cleaning the heads. It's the cheapest solution to try. There is also an erase head as well, but that is usually not part of the video head. The erase head erases the tape just prior to the record head recording the new material on the tape. Problems in the erase head will cause you to see both what you just recorded and what was previously on the tape. The picture will be distorted and shifting back and forth between the new program and the previous one.

Good luck!

- Jim

the clicking is from the capstain turning the tape -- and perhaps the metal cage holding the tape.. if it is bent then the movement of the capstain may be pushing it in an eccentric fashion.

send it in for repair.

I had this problem very recently. In fact I borrowed camcorders from my friends too and after short periods, they too started having the same problem. Essentially, it looks like there is some choppiness every second or so - like there is noise in the audio and video. After a lot of looking around, I finally found a suggestion posted that ACTUALLY WORKED on all 3 camcorders:

I placed an empty tape in the camcorder and recorded a few seconds into it. Then I removed that tape and tried to play the previous tapes that were showing the choppiness. No problems any more. Everything works fine.

What I still do not understand is why 3 camcorders (all DCR-TRV103s) all showed the same problem (with different tapes by the way). And since I still have lots of tapes to copy, I need to know why this problem is happening so I can minimize its occurrence while I complete the copying process.

People have suggested that my tapes are old and may be offering resistance to the camcorder. So I have ordered a rewinder to spin the tapes a bit before trying again. The two possibilities suggested around this was (1) some mechanical switching took place which got reset when recording; and (2) something got corrupted in the software that manages the playback buffer and that software was rebooted when it went to recording mode.

So while this will hopefully answer your question, I'm also looking for explanations for why this happened to me on 3 different camcorders.