Sony DCR-TR7000 Hi8 camera exhibiting vertical colored stripes during playback

[technoman9]

Greetings,

I was gifted two Digital 8 cameras from a coworker who bought them used a number of years ago second-hand for outdoor monitoring. Unknown number of hours on both of them. Both have playback issues, so I'd like to try diagnosing them to expand my electronic repair skills.

The DCR-TR7000 I got will play, rewind, etc. without mechanical issues but the video itself has colored stripes throughout most of the picture, as seen in the attached images. If I play the captured video back in VLC Media player and step frame-by-frame, one frame looks OK, the next bad, then OK, then bad...keeps repeating. This makes me think it might be bad heads, but I'm not sure what would cause perfect vertical stripes as opposed to horizontal streaks. I'm green when it comes to interpreting analog video errors and linking to possible causes.

Does anyone know what sort of issue vertical-colored stripes in Video 8 playback indicates? Are there any common issues on these DCR cameras that would be useful to know? Googling hasn't produced any results that satisfy me.

[technoman9]

SOLVED!

After doing some more research, I came across camcorder repair videos on YouTube by 12voltvids, a former Sony repair technician and videographer. He said that Sony camcorders in the late 90s and early 2000s suffered from corrosion within the video head edge connectors, and that the "fix" is to remove them and reseat them. He stated the same in multiple camcorder repairs, including this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ4OQQUjVf4

Sure enough, disassembling the camera shell and doing just that completely eliminated the stripes in the video. The service manual for most of these cameras is available online, and disassembly isn't bad if you are at all good with a small screwdriver. One of the easier repairs I've done in a while. I've since transferred almost 60 minutes of footage to my PC and haven't seen a single issue with the video or audio.

Passing this info along so others can save their camcorders instead of trashing them for a very easy to fix issue.

[redk9258]

Nice! Always good when you don't need parts to repair something!