Slap Your Camera Around?!
I loaned out our personal video camera to a friend and collegue for the weekend. Taking the usual risk that it might come back not working. Well, it did come back not working! In fact, he did not even get to record anything.
It’s a Sony DCR-HC96 consumer model of a nice miniDV Handicam. When you put a tape in, it says to reinsert the tape and flashes the code C:31:22 on the screen. So, I google “Sony C31:22 error” and find all these people that have got the same error on their cameras (many different models) and the fix is…slap it around a bit!
I think to myself, well this cannot be! So, I search some more. No other fixes and tons of “I hit mine really hard, and now it works” kind of comments.
So, I did it. I hit it a couple firm times on my leg. Did not help. Tried asecond time. A little harder, but kinda wimpy…no worky. Finally, I am desperate…can’t afford any kind of repair. I wack this thing good on my kneecap on the bottom and on the tape side of the camera. Lo and behold…the thing now works!
The theory from a few people is that some of the mechanism parts can get jarred off track by bumps and bounces or via tape tension. This firm tapping kinda puts things back in place. Hmmm.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Hello,
I have had this same problem several times. It always helps when I loose just a bit the tape manually. It seems that this occurs when tape has been run at the end of it’s lenght, and it is too tighten. Just be careful not to leave tape too loose.
Mel
March 5th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Yeah, I had thought of that, too. It seems in this case that the mechanism gets hung up somehow, requiring the slappin’.