MiniDV tape error: is this footage fixable?

[kyotonils]

Shooting last week (on DVC30, DVX's little brother) of my documentary on a mountain fire festival went well -- or so I thought. I shot the festival itself last year, and interviews and prep work over the past few weeks, and then last week I shot the festival again, but one tape has a vertical stripe of pixelated garbage all the way through and sound mostly drops out. I'm guessing the tape didn't seat correctly against the heads, even though there was no indication that anything was wrong. Funny thing, when I slightly fast forward in FCP, the pixelation seems to disappear, but FCP doesn't want to capture it.

Brief clip of problem footage.
alert box in FCP log & capture window.
The mini-documentary I made last year without interviews/background if anyone is interested. A Current.TV producer was on the verge of buying it, but for the crappy voice over I did on an MP3 player. This year I have a Zoom H2 for voice over.

Is there any software that would help me find out if this tape is recoverable? Or anyone with specialized deck that could look at it. There is one scene I would like to recover, where I shot the men suiting up for the festival. Luckily, I swapped out the tape after 30 minutes, well before the main festival activites got underway, and subsequent tapes were fine, though my camera still smells like smoke and it got real hot in close proximity to giant torches careening through the street.

 

[Barry_Green]

That looks pretty bad. have you tried playing the tape back in a different camera or deck?

 

[kyotonils]

Yeah, I tried it in two cameras, exactly the same. The cam never did that to me before, and the rest of the night it performed like a champ in rain, fire and swirling ash. I'm starting to come o terms with the loss, resolving to go back up there to do more interviews to cover for it.