When I play my tape it split the sceen and 3/4 of

if the take up side gets stuck it could feed excess tape and stop the mechanism. Look to see if both reels are turning when you push play. Remove cassette door for a better view if possible.

Make sure your tapes have NO slack in them. Fast forward and rewind one cassette all the way, then try again looking to see if both sides are turning. If not, you may have a belt that is old, stretched and slipping or it's split apart or just fallen off

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I am having the same probelms, and I would appreciate any help with this since I am shooting a childrens camp and I am fairly isolated and don't have the time to swop cameras or send it to get fixed. I need to know if the recording is fine (video and audio) but the playback is not working correctly...or is it not recording correctly or playing back correctly. The sound cuts out from time to time in playback. Thank you.

Have you tried cleaning the recording heads? Use a dry type cassette cleaner only. It's just like a vcr head cleaner tape, only in the small mini-dv tape size.

Same thing is happening to mine, it's not the minidv because i tried that one on a diffrent camera and it works fine. It's got to be a setting or something. If anyone can figure it out, that would be great.

Sorry to hear your situation, usually when serviced by a technician, head and tape path is cleaned and adjusted. During use you will encounter pixelation problems occur and most case tape cleaner should resolve the problem. Your condition is where if all the system is ok and have a heavy clogging on the heads, requires technician to clean each head manually to bring it back. so look for a camcorder repair facility locally and get cleaned. If you cannot find one, the service is provided for around $100 at www.camerarepairjapan. Good Luck

Dirty heads...

It is old equipment, and a replacement is only £9.99 on Ebay

Take the battery out and turn selection switch to camera and then turn it off. Put the battery back in and its working again.
if that doesn't work try
Try smacking the side of the camera relatively hard with the palm of your hand. Eject the tape and reinsert. You may need to do this a couple of times.

Supreemwun,
Canon support was of no help. They ****! To fix the problem this is what I figured out.

1. Before you start filming what you want record or just advance the tape 10 secs or so.
2. Record/ video whatever you planned.
3. Now when the thick grey lines come up on play back don't freak out.
4. Simply rewind the tape to the beginning and record briefly in the blank portion at the beginning (careful not to tape too long as to tape over your intended recording).
5. Rewind and play the thick grey lines should now be gone.

How did I figure this out just a fluke. No cleaning, no spray pretty simple. At first did not understand it but it works EVERYTIME for me. I'll deal with it until I get around to buying a new HD video camera and it won't be a Canon. Hope this helps.

I had the problem of the horizontal grey lines with some pixels of pink. I ran the dry head cleaner a few times and the lines became solid grey with the sound now skipping worse than before. I cried, cleaned again, then played the tape. I did this about 4 times and still had no luck.

I then decided to try to record with a new tape around the room to see what would happen. After recording I played the tape back and it worked perfectly. I then went back the old tape that would not play properly and it worked fine! Seems like when I used the record button after cleaning it a few times everything worked fine, wierd.

Hope this might help someone.