Fixing damaged Mini-DV?

Question

I recently found 4 missing Mini-DV cassettes from a vacation 2 years ago. When i try to play them back on my camcorder the picture is distorted in a mosaic pattern in about 4 pieces that are overlapping eachother. The sound is also choppy. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this and if there is somewhere i can send the tapes to have them restored, or maybe some kind of software that can fix the problem if i play the tapes over to my computer?

Answer 1

I don't think it is the tapes - sounds more like the head in the camcorder are not aligned.

Is this the same camcorder that captured the video or a different one?

Yuo don't want to send the tapes anywhere - see if there is a local "video services" business that will copy the tapes for you onto something else - like an external hard drive (that you would supply. 1 full tape hold 13 gig of video data. 4 tapes is over 50 gig...