The tape deck on my GL2 broke on a road trip with some friends and now I'm trying to upload that road trip footage onto my computer to edit. I borrowed a miniDV camera from someone but it doesn't play the tapes. Is it not possible to play tapes recorded on GL2s on lesser cameras, is there any way to get this to work?

That's wierd . . . I've done it before. I really don't know how to help you other then the fact it can be done . . .

Actually, how low much suckier is your friends then cam then yours? Because the firewire port broke on my GL2 and when I try to upload footage on my friends camera I get tons of audio spikes . . .

So, I don't think that helped any, lol.

Do GL2's record in such a way that other camera's can't read it right?

It should work because the information is (the picture in 1's and 0's) is already on the tape. The handycam should have no problem reading and playing back the tape.

Ideas to why it isn't/ why it wouldn't work in future;

-stuffed tape
-wrong format
-jumping from HD to SD (filming on HD but trying to capture on an SD camera... not 100% sure on this one since I have never tried it but i assume it wouldn't work)

Hopefully it aint the first option. Try to capture another tape off the handycam and if that works but it still won't work with the hliday footage, try another handycam.

Goodluck.

Maybe its the playheads, try to find another camera that is Canon brand. It should work if you can do that.