how many times a tape can be reused
 

I'm wondering about how many times my dv tapes and be reused without having problems. so far, I've taped over some of them 5 or more times and haven't noticed any glitches. do they ever get worn out?

any tips on reusing tapes? I've heard that you should not leave any timecode breaks (from the previous recordings)....that when taping over it should all be new.

also, can it have any negative effects on the heads? if it matters I use Sony premium dvc tapes and a maxell tape cleaner every 10-20? hours of filming

since i do not want any drop (and got none) with my cheap TDK tape (4$ each), i use them only once. and i think this is the best way to use tapes.

Reuse tapes? I don't. Not in cameras, anyway. Nothing goes into my cameras except for tapes that just came out of the shrinkwrap. This ensures I'm not putting someone else's contaminated tape into my acquisition equipment.

Don't know how many cycles tapes can go through, and I'd never want to find out the hard way.

There's probably no specific set point where a tape might fail. It could be a broad range of cycles, from five to 50. Video heads spin at something like 9000 RPM, 1500 RPM faster than the average circular saw. Tapes inevitably will go bad and, if it's during a one-time event, it'll be forever lost.

If you're using it to lay a program off to tape then it's probably no big deal. If it fails, then re-master. Hopefully it won't happen at the 55th minute of a one-hour program.

Preventing Disease in Camcorders
 

This is the video equivalent of safe sex. Nothing ever gets into my cassette hatch, unless I know everywhere it's been. No need to say what the equivalent of rented cassettes is. Everyone should maintain one beater VCR around the place, to accomodate tapes of ill repute.

In pre-DVR days, I kept two S-VHS decks running, just to record my daily TV programs. I used some Fuji cassettes as many as 250 times for this purpose. I recently revived some Fuji and TDK S-VHS cassettes, which had been sweltering and freezing in my attic for as much as 15 years. These were my third-string backup tapes, which contained some important edited footage and except for the first few minutes, they played back very well. From now on, if I want to do longterm storage on tapes, I will leave the first 5 minutes blank, as that's the part that is most affected by the temperature and moisture from their surroundings.