Panasonic PV-GS31 - Sudden playback issues. Is it just a dirty read head?
Hi all,
Currently on a trip and using a Panasonic PV-GS31 miniDV camcorder to film it. Well, something happened and it suddenly stopped reading my tape correctly. I have about 20 minutes of footage at this point, but the timecode across the top reset to all 0s. So when hitting the record button at one point, I noticed it was counting up from 0 again, as if I never used this tape, despite it being 20 minutes in. Confused, I started to rewind it and was met with a “push reset switch” error. Eventually got back to my hotel and did just that, which seem to temporarily fix the issue of being able to fast forward or rewind the tape.
The actual playback still seems to have gone bad. If I rewind the tape all the way back to the beginning, where I’d expect to have around 20 mins of footage displayed on the timecode, it instead shows all 0s, no matter where I fast forward or rewind the tape to.
I can still record fine on it, but as I noted, the time starts back up from 0. Then if I try to rewind a bit and actually play it back, it’s just a blue screen, and the timecode is eternally stuck at the amount of time that I had just recorded for. The video shows me playing a test recording of 4 seconds where nothing is actually playing. Then when I try to rewind it, I coincidentally get the “reset” error again. Sigh. I’ll post a photo of the inside in the comments if I can. Can’t seem to post both a photo and video on here from mobile.
Is this indicative of a dirty drum/read head? Was thinking of trying the rubbing alcohol and printer paper method tomorrow morning to see if I can fix this, but wanted a sanity check here. Super super bummed, not gonna lie, but I’m certain at least that the recorded footage hasn’t actually been lost off the tape… right?