Canon UC8 Hi8mm Camcorder fault help

Ged667

Hello,
I wonder if anyone can help me. I had a Canon UC8 camcorder which developed a fault. When trying to play a tape, it suddenly stopped and both led's on the top where flashing one after the other and there was a clicking sound at the same time. I could not resolve this so I purchased another from Ebay so that I could transfer some historic recordings that I have. I got half way through these when I stopped due to lack of time. This week I decided to get back to it and guess what, the replacement camcorder has developed exactly the same fault!

I have checked that the tape is not stuck, I changed the battery that controls the memory functions and I am running the camcorder off the mains adapter. The instruction manual has no such faults listed in it's troubleshooter so I'm baffled. As I now have two UC8's with the same problem I'm hoping I'm not the only person this unlucky and that there may be somebody who reads this who will have a solution so that I can get the rest of my tapes transferred, if you can help or advise I would be very grateful. Regards Ged

Terfyn

Sorry you are having so much trouble but my answer will be negative.
Your Hi-8 recorders will be very old in camcorder terms. I suggest you take the tapes to a professional outfit and get them transferred to DVD.
I have a Canon HV20 but replaced in 2010 with SD card based camcorders. Still got the HV20 but only dust it occasionally.

noiseboy72

Sounds like head clog - where oxide is shed from the tape and gums up the head. A tape cleaner may fix this, but the heads on these machines have tiny gaps and cleaning is not always successful.

Another possibility would be the mechanism is sticky and putting too much drag on the motors. After a while, the camcorder will give up trying to overcome this and go into fault mode.

Camcorders are not easy to fix and the skills to do so are fading. Whatever you do, do it quickly, or your recordings may become almost impossible to recover.