Hi there,
first of all I'm very thankful that I found this forum. Within the last few days I have learnt a lot about properly capturing analog video and been taking buying advice.
I have never shot anything tape (only film) so I'm pretty new to this (born '99) but today I finally got my first Hi8 camera, a Sony CCD-TRV65E. I followed the buyers guide and this camera was listed as having Stereo, TBC and S-Video - I just assume the E stands for the PAL model, correct me if I'm wrong. I couldn't find any other models in my country except maybe 4 or 5 but they were asking for 250€+. I managed to snag this for 120€ but I don't know if this was even a good deal or not, the Sony camcorder wiki says this model was "lower" class. But I'm not sure if I even need anything "better".
Okay enough of this, after fiddling around and finally understanding how to properly insert tape (lol) I noticed some weird thing in my viewfinder. To me it looks like some sort of caterpillar, you can't make it out on the photos but it's orange/brownish.
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The first thing that came to my mind was fungus (which some of my DSLR lenses have) but the color and general shape of this thing made me rethink that. I have read that it could be glue of the seals or some sort of it but not sure. This only affects the viewfinder though, it doesn't appear when using the display nor does it affect recordings. Is there any way to safely remove that thing or does anyone know
what this even is?

It doesn't really bother me to be honest because it's in the bottom right corner and I'm not sure if I will ever use the viewfinder because of the flickering (not too bad but I wouldn't want to look at it for more than 2 minutes straight since my eyes are a bit sensitive) - but I'm still kinda pissed the seller didn't mention this beforehand.
Also I was a bit freaked out when trying to play back a tape, there was this strange mechanical sound coming out of the camera and by strange I mean it doesn't sound like it's "healthy" for the parts. I have attached an .mp3 file (ignore the noise, that's coming from the camera). This does only happen when playing back a tape, pause or rewind will make it disappear (haven't tried recording yet).
Is this bad? Or normal (for a 20+ year old device)? I don't want to damage it in any way.
Thanks in advance

and please bear with me, I'm a complete noob