XL-H1 serious playback problems

Hi there. After lurking for many years, I'm finally posting. Wish it were under happier circumstances.

Had a huge client shoot a couple of days ago, and I shot with my trusty XL-H1. I haven't gone tapeless quite yet! I hadn't used the camera in a while, but I cleaned and tested before my shoot.

I shot four hours of footage using HD F2 mode. When I got back to the studio, the playback was looking jerky in my capture sofware. that's pretty normal, but it's stuttering in the camera's viewfinder too. The audio cuts in and out as well. When I digitize via firewire, those audio cutouts trigger the creation of a new clip, and even when I string them together I get missing audio.

I tried to play back using my HV-20, and ran into the same problem. All four tapes are exhibiting this issue which is peculiar. They're all Sony tapes (which I've used in this camera for years), and unlikely they all came from the same manufacturing batch.

I should also point out that I packed each of these tapes while on location, so each should have been smoothly wrapped. I've used this camera with much success for years (though it doesn't have all that many hours on it). Is there an internal setting I've missed? I'm going to really be in the soup if I've lost that day's worth of shooting. Any ideas? Please!

Thanks so much!