XHA1 and Tape Question
 

Last night I had an assistant with me to help film an interview. He loaded up the XHA1 with what I thought was a new tape. Turns out that it was a used tape with footage on it. My question is since it was a previously used tape, will I have any problems loading it into editing software and will I lose quality because it was previously recorded on?

Tapes can be used dozends if not hundreds of times without quality loss. It is an operator mistake not to switch the protection slider on to prevent writing to a used tape. Tapes are so cheap that there is really no need to reuse them, even on purpose.

There might be some problems in getting the material to computer, some editors tend to turn the capture off when the timecode is not continuous. Usually, though, when recording on top of something old, the camera uses the old timecode. This fact is often used as a safety feature by "formating" the tapes by recording black without audio on them to lay a continuous timecode on the whole tape, which makes it safer to take it out and continue shooting on the same tape later.

Nope. You should be just fine Kevin. I tape over old footage all the time.

But I also try to record the same format on each tape. For example, 24f(p) on one tape, 60i on another. Same goes for HDV and SD footage. I just do this as a precaution.....some NLE suites may have problems recognizing the footage when transferring.

Michael

Capturing to computer was indeed my concern. THe final product wol be edited in either Sony Vega or Final cut. I dont know much about editing as I am fairly new to the game. IS this something that I should tell the editing person about or am I better off tring to
re-shoot the video?

While the footage you already shot is PROBABLY fine, if you have the opportunity to shoot again, I say take it. Tell your client you want to get some alternate camera angles, and make sure they wear the same outfit. You have the opportunity to make this look like a multi-camera interview.

Michael: The new footage was recored in the same format as the old footage. So are you thinking that the computer will not have a difficult time capturing and recognizing the time code? The worse thing about this is that this situation could have easliy been avoided if the protection slider was on.

You should not have any problems, Kevin.

We'll help you if you have a problem, but I think you are worrying about nothing at the moment. You should be fine, Kev. I tape over old footage all the time.