Hi8 tapes footage not showing up on camcorder. Help?

Question

I put a Hi8 tape filled with video into my camcorder, but when I play it I get a white screen with a few vertical lines for a second, then snow.

It was fine an hour ago. Either something happened to the tape, or: I had left the camcorders' tape mechanism open for 20 minutes. But the tape does FF, RW, Play and eject fine.

Answer 1

sounds like a head clog. run a cleaning tape for about 10 seconds and see if that clears up the problem. if you don't have a cleaning tape, use a brand new, never played tape for about 20 seconds instead. don't rewind either type of cleaning tape. If your Hi8 tape is the MP type, then the binder may be failing and you may get clogs everytime it plays.