Gray streak during playback on Hi8?

Question

I'm quite frustrated with two particular Hi8 camcorder tapes of mine. During playback a single gray streak (very akin to the streaks that appear during rewinding or fast-forwarding) appears toward the bottom of the screen (both LCD and in preview for upload software.) Other tapes play perfectly fine. The only thing markedly unique about these tapes is that they are the only Maxell tapes I have, and they are labeled XR-Metal. The material on the tapes just turned a year old, but other tapes twice or three times as old play just as well, and I watched the exact same Maxell tapes recently without the gray streak. If anyone knows at least the cause of this problem or how to repair/clean a TAPE (not the camera itself) I would greatly appreciate some help. This is video from a senior year marching band trip to Washington DC and contains many wonderful memories with good friends that I'm now geographically separated from.

Answer 1

Your tape is starting to wear out. Transfer & burn the content onto DVD's as soon as possible!!

Answer 2

Try to fast-forward and rewind before play.

Even for new tapes, we do this to ensure a clean shoot.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

adjust your tracking and clean your heads

don't use the tapes too much otherwise it'll break soon.

Answer 4

Hi8, like all analog helical scan format tapes, have a headswitch that occurs near the bottom of the visual picture. If the "tracking" is not correct, the new, incoming video from the next field does not match up (overlay) with the previous played field. The tracking is in fact just a tape back tension  on helical scan systems, and in older decks that was done with a mechanical adjustment.  However the later decks, like Hi8, replaced the mechanical adjustment with digital memory that could create the overlay timing electronically. If your camcorder has a playback tracking adjustment in its menu, try that. Try doing a fast wind through the entire tape, that may help correct tension problems especially if there were highlight sections that you often paused and replayed. I think that the real problem is that these particular tapes have be damaged by stretching and they are beyond the normal range of possible correction.