Using unused tape ....good idea or not? Using unused tape ....good idea or not?

[Rishi Kumar]

Hey

I have a small problem. I have a wedding tomorrow and I'm sorta short on tapes. I have an extra tape right in front of me, which I have only used 5 minutes of...the rest of the 55 minutes is still good. IS it OKAY, for me to find to reuse the rest the of 55 minutes to do my other recordings on? Obviously I know its bad to retape over things, but in this case I'm just using up the tape I didn't use

Thanks!

[Bob Hart]

Rishi


It is an ethical and risk reduction versus take your chances thing.

If you are providing a service for a paying client, then you are perhaps honour-bound to provide new recording stock, especially if the tapes are to be an enduring archive they get to keep.

Re-using camera stock is apparently fairly commonplace in the news departments in TV stations over here, so it can't be all bad.

I have had two brand new tapes which were no good out of the box and lost me some good shots.

I also used a batch of used Red Sony tapes which were a gift to me. The operator only ever used tapes once.

They had been event logging tapes from within aerobatic aircraft and had been in an abusive environment - vibrations and heat. Only two out of around sixty tapes went bad. These tapes had been rolled through the cameras without any standby pauses. I would be less comfortable using tapes which had lots of standby pauses during their use.

I would use new tapes to be confident that nothing has contaminated them.

It only takes a little insect to crawl in, leave a turd on the exposed ribbon of tape and crawl out again, or ride the moving tape and get squished in the camera transport. It is then game over for you at the worst possible moment.

[Dave Blackhurst]

55 minutes of the tape is NEW, and has not been recorded...

FWIW, as a matter of habit, I would record a minute or so of tape, and 15-30 seconds of color bars on EVERY tape after inserting into the camera, then play that back to make sure
a)camera is working fine
b) tape is working fine
This makes the tape "tested", not "used".

Don't miss the ritual one bit now I'm tapeless (except for archived stuff, including quite a few tapes just as you've described that were checked/prepped and not used for some reason.

[Battle Vaughan]

One problem is that if you take the tape out of the camera then reinsert it, you will screw up your time code, which may make log and capture a problem....if you rewind it completely and record over the 5 minute bit so there is only one time code, you will probably be ok; some people re-use tapes but a new tape is what, 5 bucks? My two cents.../ Battle Vaughan

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Battle Vaughan

One problem is that if you take the tape out of the camera then reinsert it, you will screw up your time code

Well, not exactly. Every camera rewinds a bit when you place the tape back in the cam, finds the old TC and records continuously from there.

Where you get into trouble is if you've "pre-blacked" or pre-striped the tape. Then the cam can't tell the difference between the old TC and the new, and although they should be the same, they often aren't. That's when you have TC breaks that can screw up capture.

[Battle Vaughan]

Thanks for the clarification, Adam, although I might say in my limited experience the several cameras I used at work would reliably break time code in removing the tape. Occasionally, for running a test of some sort, I would re-use a tape, and in rewinding it fully, could start anew. I would never use such a tape for a project, however, only to check out some function or something.

At best, it seems iffy, and re-using tape was one of our video team no-nos. A decent tape cost about what a roll of color film (remember that stuff?) used to cost, seems not worth a risk on a pro job particularly, to re-use...make this my three cents, now...:) / BV

[Jonathan Betz]

Every camera rewinds a bit when you place the tape back in the cam, finds the old TC and records continuously from there.

This may be obvious, but if you are afraid of timecode breaks you could also manually rewind a bit from the end of your previously recorded footage. It sounds like most cameras do this automatically, but if you do this manually and make sure you start recording over previously recorded TC, you should be fine.

While doing projects for myself, I have re-used both standard DV and HDV tapes before, usually only twice, but have never had a problem. Other than the possibility of bugs crawling in (seems like a slim chance), what are the problems associated with re-using tapes? Is there a decrease in quality? Again, I have re-used HDV tapes and could not see any effect on the footage.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

I can't see any problem whatsoever! Simply use the new-unused section of the tape and worry about more important things.

[Tom Hardwick]

I agree with Dave B - record some colour bars and check that it's dropout free. That's about all you can do to check out a new tape (which your 55 mins of tape effectively is Rashi).

I'm always wary about using a new, untested, highly complex mechanical and CHEAP product on an important shoot, and as you'll see from the posts here, new tape (which has had no human inspection of any kind in the factory) can be faulty. It's not surprising, a new microphone with only one moving part and costing 100x more can also be faulty right out of the box.

Which is why I value my recycled tapes. I know they're good; I've tested them all the way though and found them to be so. They've also shed the minute hi-spot oxide particles - it's running new tapes that means you have to use the head cleaner.

And remember that people who say they don't recycle tapes only ever record onto them - they don't play them back.

tom.

[Stefano Sernagiotto]

How come when i go to print to tape i've always to cross my finger even if i'm using the brand new Panasonic ay-dvm60fe (that should be good)?
Render Once comes good and the other one it doesn't....So if i have to print back one hour tape a few drops could occur on the tape so i'm always stressed out about that!
I've always to watch it back before putting the tape a part.

Thx a lot