Horizontal grey lines running whe camcorder in play mode

you may have a faulty camera there,,,or the vcr tape may be faulty and has spred some of the tape on the recording head try running a cleaning tape through the vcr first to clean the heads,,then use a new tape (not the old tape!) to try that out,, if its cleans the head up throw away the old tape so you never put it back in this vcr

Same thing is happening to mine, it's not the minidv because i tried that one on a diffrent camera and it works fine. It's got to be a setting or something. If anyone can figure it out, that would be great.

yes change the tape and also use a head cleaning cassette to clean the cam. chaminda from Sri Lanka

Gray horizontal lines across the screen in playback is symptom of dirty / clogged video head and you need to use good quality mini-dv video head cleaning tape to clean video head.

Your playback heads might be clogged. I am not sure if this camera with give you a RF warning if your record heads get clogged. Also most professional machines drums are rated at 1000 - 1500 hours before they need to be replaced. If you are at 500 and never cleaned the heads it is time to. Run a cleaning tape a few times.

Supreemwun,
Canon support was of no help. They ****! To fix the problem this is what I figured out.

1. Before you start filming what you want record or just advance the tape 10 secs or so.
2. Record/ video whatever you planned.
3. Now when the thick grey lines come up on play back don't freak out.
4. Simply rewind the tape to the beginning and record briefly in the blank portion at the beginning (careful not to tape too long as to tape over your intended recording).
5. Rewind and play the thick grey lines should now be gone.

How did I figure this out just a fluke. No cleaning, no spray pretty simple. At first did not understand it but it works EVERYTIME for me. I'll deal with it until I get around to buying a new HD video camera and it won't be a Canon. Hope this helps.

Someone here recommended on another post to put the lense cap on & videotape the blackness in a quiet room for 5-10 mins. I tried this as a last resort & it worked. When I played back the tape, no more skipping or gray lines. I had 4-5 SOLID gray lines with skipping video & audio in between on every tape I put in. I think the person who helped me solve this said that it was a result of the tape alignment going off. My camera is a Canon zr80 digital camcorder. (Called Canon, they had me reset it & then recommended sending it in).

I had the problem of the horizontal grey lines with some pixels of pink. I ran the dry head cleaner a few times and the lines became solid grey with the sound now skipping worse than before. I cried, cleaned again, then played the tape. I did this about 4 times and still had no luck.

I then decided to try to record with a new tape around the room to see what would happen. After recording I played the tape back and it worked perfectly. I then went back the old tape that would not play properly and it worked fine! Seems like when I used the record button after cleaning it a few times everything worked fine, wierd.

Hope this might help someone.

I have the same issue and have for over a year (haven't had the time to send it to Canon for a few weeks to analyze, but have cleaned it numerous times). But I can tell you that the problem is internittent and the recordings are fine. Eventually, don't know the remedy, but it will suddenly stop doing that and I can download fine, and watch on camera fine. When it does happen, I just keep recording. It never shows up permanently. I re-tyr downloading or viewing and about the 3rd or 3th time (let it sit for a few hours between) it is normal!

Hey,

I just started to have the same problem, 5 grey lines and intermittent audio. I the settings and i tried different tapes and No Joy. Then I tried to record onto an old tapes to see if the new recording would do it and the camera showed me a strange icon for exposure. I set the exposure back to 'Easy' and Viola, I recorded and the playback is now clean. Even old tapes play OK now...

The settings must have gotten wacked somehow. I glad it worked out, good luck.