What Problems With Tape?
 

Hello all, I have read a lot about mini dv tapes and not to over use them!
What sort of problems does one look for without discarding a tape that has life left in it..........Pete.

Re: What Problems With Tape?
 

Hi Peter,

I was taught that, if the footage is important to you, you should only use each tape once.
If you're just using it for home videos or something else unpaid with low stakes, then keep your eyes open for dropouts, which will most often show up as a glitch or 'blip' in the footage, and will either reset or momentarily halt the timecode, depending on your settings. If you are shooting in HD, you will definitely notice these, especially when you import footage to edit. As far as playing back your tapes is concerned, try to make a digital copy and play that, and definitely avoid scrubbing when you capture.

Unfortunately, the only way that I know of to predict tape failure is to assume that it will happen sooner than later, and try to take preventative measures.

Re: What Problems With Tape?
 

True, I often reuse tapes and getting a dropout at least once a tape is almost certain. That said, once or twice I got dropouts on a brand new tapes and once I managed to go through a reused tape without a glitch. Generally, using only new tapes greatly minimizes the risk of glitches. I reuse my tapes because most stuff I do is unpaid so there no point spending extra money.

Piotr

Re: What Problems With Tape?
 

Not sure I should really be adding to the vast number of posts on the subject of tape dropouts, but here for what it's worth is my experience of many hundreds of hours of dv tape acquisition:

Standard definition
I have never had any problems with dropouts on Standard definition acquisition on any brand/quality of tape - probably because of the intraframe coding used on DV. There were a couple of new dv tapes which were instantly rejected by cameras because of mechanical problems and had to be thrown out.

HDV
I have had very few dropouts on HDV acquisition with JVC Pro HD tapes when using my own cameras which are well maintained. When using the cheapo tapes and also with school cameras there have been quite a few.

Reuse
On the rare occasions when I have reused a tape, no problems have been encountered.

I don't take all that many stills nowadays, but have had two CF cards used on my Canon still camera fail on me.