i have a cannon elura 40 mc. its worked great for so long and lately it has been beeping and say remove cassette. at first i just thought it was the cassette but then it started doing it more often. i would put a brand new cassette in and it would do the same thing. and now it is happening. but i cant get it to push back in once it is popped out. it wont even slide down with no tape in. has anyone else had this problem? any advice is appreciated.

thanks

hi, i'm having that exact same problem....where it says in red "REMOVE CASSETTE" and after that the cassette is useless..cause anything i film on it comes out distorted.

also i end up losing footage when ever i try to play back tapes on my elura 40 mc...i've done some research and it seems this cam..and others in the elura and ZR series..seem to "lose the time code" on some tapes..causing the footage on the tapes to look distorted, while the timecode is all jumpy and the image is all flickery...and i've already lost almost 15 tapes full of IMPORTANT FOOTAGE...and i just can't take this any more..since Canon denies this..i didn't know before hand what the prob was..so i just thought it was the tapes i bought...but it wasn't..so i just kept ruining tape after tape..i'm about to go insane..does any one know if there is anyway to recover footage on tapes..which have the time code damaged or just scrambled by the camcorder...or what to do with this cam...cause..i'm not placing one more tape into this damn devil.
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Has anyone seen this problem with the 50?

tnx,
jim

Canon Elura 40MC - no problems since January '03 when I bought it.

My Elura 40MC didn't start acting up until after I had it for one year. At first, it worked flawlessly. But now, I am having EXACTLY the same problem as JFox and HeReTik. Luckily, I bought the extended warranty, but the repair shop has been unable to fix the problem. It has already been in repair 2 times since July 2003, and is about to go back in for the 3rd time. It is an intermittent problem, making it that much more difficult to fix. For example, I would video tape something and play it back, and it works perfectly. The very next day, I would play back the same exact tape, and all I get is distrorted footage. Very frustrating! But most important, I am missing some really important events. To top it all off, I have spent a fortune on DV tapes, and I have a drawer full of corrupted tapes that are now useless. Does anyone out there have a fix for this? I hate to cough up the big money to buy another camcorder, but I'll be damned if I miss my son's birth in 2 months! If I don't get a fix for this soon, I will go and buy what works, a SONY. I had an old one for over 10 years, and that huge beast still runs today. Help please.

My Elura 40MC, is having the same problem, Ive had it 13-14 months and maybe used it 5-6 hours, now it wont play back video, it sporadic ,sometimes it works and other times it Flickers a pixelated image and flashing time code. If Canon wont fix this after 5-6 hours of use, the public should know.

Very unhappy

BP

you are all explaining the same problem i have. word for word (the whole eject tape thing, and the whole having tapes flicker in blue pixels)
well i've decided to just get a nother cam, i'll prolly never buy a canon again, prolly go with a sony or panasonic.
if anyone finds exactly what the problem is, and how muc it is to fix it. post it here one day

I am also experiencing the same problem with my Elura 40MC, which started 1 day after my warranty expired. The Service Center 'requoted' (took 1 month to figure this out) the cost to fix it at $650US to fix the PCB - or motherboard!!!.

At this price, I am not willing to fix it, but will need my camera by the holidays.! Has anyone been able to fix this problem elsewhere? Any recommendations (where/costs) would be appreciate

** Addendum **
To be fair, I received my camcorder back from the Service Center and it is working. -- I have tested it for 2 days and haven't seen the problem show up again. Don't know what to sa ....

I guess you meant that you took back your Elura 40MC without the $650 repair.

I have the exact problem with my unit. I bought mine in Aug 2002. ( I believe that was the first month it appeared in the Canadian market).

I used a head cleaner each time the error appeared. It seemed to temporary fix the problem for about 1/2 a new tape and the error came back again.

I noticed that the problem is from "play back" not recording since some of the previously unplayable tapes seem to play after a long head cleaning.

I'll try the local repair shop here in Toronto after the new year and let you know what they say and how much $$$.

It is frustrating.

Well that is not good news, I am hoping this issue was resolved in the 50 because spending hard earned money on a camcorder that lasts under 2 years is unacceptable in my books.

I have been through the mill with Canon on this. It is a problem of head alignment. This sounds common with the ZR, Optura and Elura lines. This problem most frequently occurs during a rewind, but also shows up in recording and playback as failure to fully erase previously recorded footage, mosaic recording, and loss of time code (which is absolutely critical in DV).

Talk of this problem is all over the forums and usenet groups dealing with Video. Not only that, but if you go to Canon's website to check their troubleshooting FAQ you will find that Canon uses the identical FAQ for every camcorder that they sell, and, of eleven questions on the FAQ, two deal with this problem (which eventually leads to the cassette becoming locked in the camera, and the camera shutting down completely). Canon absolutely denies that they have a design or manufacturing fault with their cameras.

The problem seems to show up at about one year of use.

If the camcorder is out of warranty, Canon will swak you with their minimum bench charge of $145, which added to your outgoing shipping, California tax (repair facility is in Irvine, CA) and Canon's return shipping will bring your total bill to about $180 for the deal.

The repair on my ZR10 lasted two weeks until it started to fail again.

I would love to hear from folks who are having this problem with their Canon's as I have decided to contact my state attorney general to see if it would be possible to pursue Canon for perpetrating a consumer fraud, namely that they fail to notify any prospective buyers that, as these cameras age, they will require frequent, intermittent and expensive repairs. As vrecksler said above, a camera that fails before two years is up is totally unacceptable.

wow..thanks for the info.
please continue keeping us informed with what happens, tommyk321.
Like i've stated..i have the exact same problem you all are going through...and well my cam has been sitting in a box in my closet for months now..along with around 15 (important) tapes all with messed up time codes...there's still now way to fix these tapes right?

edit: oh and could you guys please post links to either other forums or groups who are talking about the same exact problem we're all talking about here....i would like to learn a lil more about the problem...thx

I've also had this problem for about 2 months now. I work at a TV station and i've had our engineers look at it and they had no clue what was going wrong with it. I also have problems where the Iris gets stuck in either full open or fully closed. Then when its half working i can shoot fine except when i go from a dark scene to a bright scene then back to dark it won't re-open the iris.

I agree that this is unacceptable and its sad to see it happening to alot of other owners.

Also to everybody, don't give up on ur tapes!! They won't play back in Elura but you may want to try another Mini DV camera where they might work fine. We have DVC-Pro decks here at work and using an adaptor they play fine. So all your footage may not be lost.

As far as I know, the time code is burned onto the tape as you are making it, so there is no way to "fix" the timecode, but what I have done is this: when I am logging and capturing the tape onto the computer, I capture right up to the point where the timecode breaks, then stop the capture. At this point Final Cut Pro sends up a dialogue box that warns of the timecode break, and tells you that you MUST re-log. I ignore this warning, and save the file anyway.

Then I back the tape up just to the point before the code break, begin playback again, and, when the code shifts, begin capturing again, going to the next break point, at which time I repeat the procedure as described above.

Don't know what movie editor you're using, or if it will let you do what I am doing, but this is the way that I have gone. A warning though, as you are importing the saved clip into the timeline of your editor, be careful only to include the footage that precedes the timecode break, because if you don't, all sorts of weird things can happen.

Of course, this workaround is moot for me as my camera is now in such shape that if you put ANY tape in the deck and press ANY of the transport buttons, the "Remove Cassette" warning happens immediately. It is now totally unusable, which brings up a point--Robin, or any other mods on this forum, would this problem be worthy of its own discussion group? I really can't tell so far if this is truly a wide-spread problem, or if the few of us talking about it have lemons. It sure would be nice to know this, as a correspondent from a Usenet group tells me that the tape transport mechanism in my ZR10 is exactly the same one used for all cameras that Canon makes.

thanks for the info guys...
yeah..i tried one of my "damaged" tape on my cam a couple months ago..when the problem wasn't so severe..and like 15 minutes of the 60 minutes i filmed, survived...then i just used premiere to cap the footage....and then i tried another tape and EVERY thing was lost..so yeah, it does depend...but right now..i don't have another minidv camcorder..or access to a DV deck..so i can't try out my other like 15 tapes...i'm definitely not gunna try them on my elura, because when i did..it "ate" or lost the time code to a perfectly fine tape.