Video playback on Fast Forward only

[AndrewP]

A friend of mine made a home video of his son and daughter in law's wedding
using Sony 8mm tape. After all the celebrations were over he and his wife
sat down and watched what he had done and picture and sound were OK. He
passed the tape onto the newly weds after their return from honeymoon and
they tried to watch it but just got a blue screen and highly distorted
sound. My friend had the tape back and played it himself and got the same
result but found that when he fast forwarded he had a picture but obviously
interlaced with video noise. I asked him to let me have the tape and I would
see if I could do anything. Using a Sony 840 Hi8 camcorder to playback I
thought I had cracked it when I got good pictures of his granddaughter
playing in the garden but when I got to the wedding sequence I got exactly
the same results as he did. I tried altering all the playback settings on my
camera even down to NTSC playback but to no avail.

There is obviously sound and video on the tape and my feelings that it is a
mechanical problem with the tape is negated by the good quality footage at
the start of the tape.

Anyone come across anything like this before?

[Bob Barker]

Ive had this problem.The vcr I was using was auto tracking (no manual tracking ) and the range needed wasnt enough to bring it all together. When I used an older machine with manual tracking I could get good picture and sound. I was told that the machine I used to record the tape on ,( an old one at the time)
needed new pulleys they had streched or something thus throwing the tracking out.
I Bought a new vcr instead and not had the problem since.
BB.

[AndrewP]

Thanks Bob.

I will borrow an old 8mm camera and see if I can get it to output anything.