doesnt record/play picture

[flyingkiwi1]

A friend of mine has a JVC video camera that only records sound, even this was not working for a while but seems to be again now. But the picture not. When in standby it seems fine..until either you record or playback. Stuffed or a quick fix?

[Platypus]

It could have dirty heads...

Not quite sure what you're meaning by "When in standby it seems fine"

[flyingkiwi1]

Sorry- the screen on the camera shows the picture 100% then dies when the rec button pressed. Almost like the recording/ playback drive is sucking all the power out of the system and the camera keeps going but not enough power to run important parts. Do you think the heads could cause such thing or would that be out of the picture now?

[Platypus]

You mean the flip-out LCD screen? If it also has an eyepiece EVF (viewfinder), does the image die there too? If you do a recording (even though nothing comes up on the screen), can you get access to another camera to play the tape (assuming it's not a HDD camera) & see if anything has been recorded?

If just the LCD image disappears, but a recording is still made, it's probably a backlight fault or flexible loom problem. If the recording fails (blank) as well as the image on LCD and eyepiece disappearing, then it possibly has a faulty CCD (image sensor). Some JVC models had a CCD made by Sony, which were prone to losing the image.