I own a Sony Handycam and there has been trouble when playing back a tape. It becomes choppy. It will play a couple seconds of the tape, pause, then continue. Anyone have ideas what is going on here? How would I fix this?
I am not a camera expert, and I am not sure this is exactly what you are talking about, but I had two Sony Camcorders in the 90’s and I experienced a similar thing with both of them.
This is what would happen to me: I would videotape a scene (scene one) and I would play it back immediately and it would look fine. Later in the day, I would videotape another scene and it would look fine, but the previous scene one would look all choppy, or full of static and the only way I could tell what I videotaped earlier during scene one was to put into fast forward and then I can barely make out what I videotaped. Sometimes what I would videotape would last for a week, sometimes just a few hours, sometimes just a few seconds of the tape would be messed up, sometimes the entire scene.
Anyway, I took it to a pro and IIRC, he said that I had a recording/playback head alignment problem. In other words, I would tape scene one with the tape head in a certain position and it would record and playback fine. However, after bouncing around in my camera bag for the day, the head would move slightly, meaning I will never be able to play that section of tape clearly again. I am not sure how camcorders “track” the tape and if it can be adjusted like the tracking control of a VCR. It cost over $100 to fix. Here is a link that might point you in the right direction: