This video is like a public service! I have a Sony DCR-TRV320, Sept. 2000. Bought it new. Great shape. Been stored for years.  Got it all out to finally transfer/digitize my 8mm and Digital8 tapes. Worked fine for awhile. Then got about 1/2 way thru my 80 tapes (1/2 1 hr. Digital8 & 1/2 2 hr. 8 mm) and it starts dropping out and static like dirty heads. Go to some effort to get a dry cleaning tape. Run it for 10 seconds. Seems better, but then drops and fuzzes again. Run the clean tape again. Same. Woulda likely kept it up when I luckily found this! Your guidance gave me the confidence to tear into my excellent condition machine. A couple additional/different wire connectors on mine (black wires between two halves). but managed to work around. Used deoxit as suggested. Got back together and is now working fine!  NEVER would of known or tried this without your video! Thank you very much!

You are a legend!!
I purchased an old TRV320 to transfer footage and 1.5 tapes in had the same symptoms, which head cleaning didn’t fix.
I found your video and did the same procedure today… seems to have fixed the issue.
Thanks so much. You saved me $$$

Thanks for taking time to film and post . Wow that is a LOT of work to do a repair .. however when it is family memories it is worth it . Those Kids are probably now some ones Grand ma ..

So, during this session, you mentioned that you did a lot of tapes of special events like weddings. I did the same thing but way earlier. I'm talking in the 70's. I did them on audio tapes. Weddings, church singing groups, small music groups like band or other events. I even did special effects for a play and a couple of puppet shows. Used 1/2 track audio recorders at 15 IPS. My final tapes could be cassettes or 8 track cart's or reel to reel 1/4 track copies. The 1/2 machines were Technics 1500 ( best machines for the money), the cassettes was a Pioneer CTF 9191 and the 8 track tapes were recorded on a Wollensake made by 3M. All in all, I used about $4K to produce these copies. I did it until I got a Beta video "portable" set up.

Man!! You rock!! I had precisely the same issue with a similar Sony Camera (DCR-TRV740) and I followed your lead and it worked great!! Thank you so much!!

Another one fixed. Thumbs up Dave.

Outstanding video!  It took me longer than it took you, but that's because I often paused the video to ensure I was doing it correctly. I did it correctly!  Thanks so much!    :)

My Sony Hi8mm back in 1998 was used and I still had to pay 350 dollars, now I have footage on dvd..oh the format chasing we old timers did just to keep stuff no one with a modern cell phone atten/span of no more than 3sec and 5 is like a 30 sec. commercial to them...love your vids.

Good luck I hope you win the 50K :)

Thank You!

Great job! I in Russia bought dcr-trv120e out of service for $3)) I hope to fix with your videos!)

Great job, thanks for sharing! Greets from Marcel The Netherlands Europe 👍🙂👌

Can’t thank you enough for this video. Got a second hand CCD-TRV66 to transfer tapes since I have a couple tapes that were shot on a Canon L2 that don’t want to play nice with my Digital8 camcorder (annoying audio buzz). Didn’t produce an image but audio was intermittently coming through. I saw this tutorial and thankfully the mechanism was more or less the same, reseated the ribbon cables (didn’t use the contact cleaner in your video) and I got playback and was able to transfer the tapes over passthrough with no audio buzz.

Nice work! For sure, you can open a Sony video gear museum with working stuff!

thanks for the video. did what you said and my camera finally works. only issue was i got a weird error and the tape deck wouldnt close. i searched up the error online and it basically said to beat on the camera for a while and it ewill play the tapes without an issue. i did so and the camera works great now.

Good evening Dave! Your videos and presentation are amazing! I have a Sony DCR-TRV103 and had the same issues, so I followed your guidance  to a T, and reassembled it. I ran into a problem, the cassette will shut, and open with the eject button, but it will not retract into the play position. So, I figured I buggered up the connections. Pulled it back apart and removed and installed them again to no avail. Then I decided to wiggle them while plugged in. I was able to get the cassette to retract down once but upon opening again, it will not close when wiggling connections. I must ad that I did not use contact cleaner, as I watched a new video of yours where you did not recommend it.  Not sure how to make direct contact with you, so hopefully you see this. Jim

Good to see you using small screwdrivers there is  a joke going around, the smaller the screw the bigger the makita drill.

These videos are amazing! Thank you. I'm learning a bit about my camera but not quite enough just yet.  I have a very similar model to this one but it's not digital. I believe my model is the TRV308. My issue that I'm having with my camera is that the output doesn't seem to work. The camera plays back fine in the viewfinder however when I try to watch my tapes on a TV I get no signal on the TV. I've tried different TV's and different cables. I have the 3.5mm AV Out port and the SVideo out. The SVideo works but sends the image in B/W.

Any tips on what the issue might be and how I can watch my old 8mm videos on the TV?

Okay here's my situation, I have a DCTRV-120 that sat for years. I brought it out just last year. Then I played it and thought it was fine and promised myself that I would transfer some tapes when I got time.. Recently, I was ready and I played tapes on it again and got some signal on the monitor. After that it slowly degraded with blips and a degenerative signal. So, after cleaning the heads, which failed, I was fortunate to see this video and thought I would try it. I ordered DEOx-IT and got the cheaper one with a brush.  I waited until it arrived and then I embarked on dismantling the camera. Some thoughts on that: thankfully all the screws are on the outside of the case (except for two holding the inner base plate on) so that when I reassembled it I had no screws left over; pulling the nose off first and then the back and side panels takes some clever prying without damaging the connections to those elements; and finally being able to snap those panels back into place (and I mean snap) so that the screws line up takes a confident and thoughtful approach.  However, I was able to accomplish this task and have my camera back into full working order. Who would have though that oxidized connections would cause the symptoms described in this video?  All I had to do was remove the ribbon cables, put some Deox on them and reassemble.  It took about an hour to an hour and a half, but it was worth it.  (except for two holding the inner base plate on). Thanks.

Got a CCD-TRV58 here with a similar issue (noisy playback, no record). Tried this out and the only result I got was a damaged loading motor connector that now randomly looses connecting and throws the camera into emergency shutdown. I also messed up the alignment thinking it was that. At first I did want to fix it, but now that I got two other cameras that work this one turned into my dedicated tape rewinder cause that's the only thing it's useful for (apart from chewing tapes during playback haha).