I had the same problem. What I found was that my camcorder was not slowing down while rewinding as it approached the beginning of the tape. This caused the tape to jam. By detaching and reattaching the battery, the camcorder takes up the slack in the tape and often would then be okay to use. In those events where this did not fix the program, I was able to carefully remove the tape, and, with some of the tape exposed, carefully rewind it by hand. Eventually, however, this problem continued and even worsened. I have a maintenance contract on my camera so I returned it for service. Unfortunately, there were unable to fix my camcorder and have offered to replace it. Hope this is helpful.