Can I borrow your VHS VCR

[mikesbytes]

Got 5 tapes that I need to transfer to another media. Has anyone got a working VCR that I can borrow for a day or two

[othy]

Yeah, you can come around and collect it tonight if you like.

[mikesbytes]

Thank's Othy. Make that next week sometime

[othy]

No problem, give me a call / text when you need it.

[mikesbytes]

Ah crap, my camcorder isn't working, it won't accept the tapes. The mechanism works when no tape is inserted but won't load one when a tape is put in.

I have 2 options;
1. get it fixed, but where?
2. buy a minidv camcorder

[christian]

More info would be needed to give you a quick diagnosis on the camcorder. When you say it won't load when there is a tape in there do you mean it won't close the door assuming its one of the ones with a closes the tape door itself. Depending on how old it is and how much it was worth new it may not be worth fixing.

[mikesbytes]

the tape goes in correctly, there is no external problem such as a door that won't close. The mechanism is rather complicated, after closing the door, the motor moves the tape further in, then there is a secondary door that you manually close.

If there is no tape inserted all the mechanism works correctly. If you put a tape in, the camera tries to engage it and then quits, opening the door for tape removal.

[weiyun]

Have you tried cleaning the tape path? Rollers, pins and heads.

[christian]

Something could be slipping. The camera will pull the tape out and wrap it around the head, if this fails then it will give up. Its not usually done with a belt drive in cameras as far as I know. Do you know if the guides are moving at all with a tape in? Have you tried a different tape that is known to be good? Is there any dust in the mech?

[mikesbytes]

The tape is brand new, it went in the first time, but then the camera failed due to the dew meter and I had to leave it 24 hours. From that point it wouldn't accept the tape, so I've tried a brand new cleaning tape and it rejects that too.

Looking inside with the torch, I can't see anything wrong.

There is a small window, so I shined the torch in there and I can see that the first stage of pulling the tape out works, but then it doesn't do the second stage of pulling the tape around the heads. Without a tape in, I can see the pins go around the the head, so the mechanism that pulls the tape around the heads is working but is not been activated.

[Toff]

Mike, I have an almost unused Sony VCR. Do you want it?

[mikesbytes]

Thanks Toff, but I don't need it. I only need to playback about 8 VHS tapes and I have Tim's VCR for the job.

The problem I've encountered is that my camcorder is stuffed. Yes I could dump the 8 VHS tapes into the pc with a cheap piece of hardware, but I also have 60 miniDV tapes that I want to dump to a hard drive, so I still need miniDV playback even if I simply bypass the problem for the 8 VHS tapes