Capturing miniDV recorded with misaligned heads?

[photoguy1234]

So I've got a customer whose DV tapes won't play in any deck: DSR-11, HV20, HVR-1500, AJ-1400, AJ-1700, other decks and cameras...

Those decks that give me a message say some variant of wrong tape format. Usually that means PAL but I've tried decks that can do PAL and the videographer says it was shot NTSC. HVR-1500 for example says ILL TAPE FORMAT. HV20 says error: wrong tape specification.

AND... while perhaps it 'could' have been some camera-specific LP format, the client revealed after we spent time testing that it doesn't even play in the original camera which was a Sony HDR-FX1.

So the working assumption is this was recorded with misaligned heads. There's 7 tapes. Is there anybody here with experience capturing trying to align the heads as the original was? ... assuming the guy was willing to pay for the time and expertise to do that?

[lordsmurf]

Misalignment would cause artifacts, not complete lack of signal.

People have unreliable memories, so I'd not 100% trust the person telling you it was shot with a certain camera.

[photoguy1234]

I've considered that, though without clear answers, I'm not really willing to go fishing for new cameras for testing. I don't have a JVC HDV currently. Do you have a JVC HDV tape handy to stick in a Sony deck to see what message you receive?

There's no artifacts. Nothing comes up on-screen. The timecode will go for a few seconds and then an error will show up saying wrong tape specification, wrong tape format or change tape format. No picture shows at all. I've got every pro deck, many consumer cameras and if I get anything at all, it some variant of this error message. All these decks work fine for other tapes.

1) Are there DV cameras whose recordings will ONLY play on the same camera? LP?
2) What message appears when you put a JVC HDV tape in a Sony or Canon HDV deck?
3) Are there any other foreign models that do SECAM.

I've accounted for miniDV SP/LP HDV in NTSC and PAL. Outside of a head problem, this is either JVC HDV or some foreign format. What else? And it was shot in the US, so it would be pretty unusual to not be NTSC anyway. I mean unless these aren't the original tapes, and the videographer recorded some footage to these tapes from his computer with improper settings, I don't know what other options there are.