head cleaning
 

How many hours of rec time on the heads untill one should throw in the cleaning tape?
Considering it is under normal filming conditions?
dvx100.............thank you

P.S All I do is rec on my cam .........

I thought the DVX100 had a build-in headcleaning device.

Only clean your heads when you need to do so. Using a cleaning tape puts wear on the heads.

Frank makes an excellent point. Clean your heads only when you began to have dropout or other problems that you have good reason to suspect head clogs. Or after having to change tape lubrications in the tape stock you are using.

Other than that - unless you're filming in a dust storm or storing tape buried in your backyard, the DVX100 does have a basic mechanism to protect the heads from dust etc.

got it .....
thank's ........

What do you all think of the liquid head cleaning kits? They seemed to work well on my audio tape recording equipment.
I see a lot of mention of head cleaning with a miniDV cassette.
Is anyone here using the kits? Can I just use 91% or 99% isoproyl alcohol and cotton swabs as I did with audio tape heads?

Years ago, when I worked in master control in a little VHF station, we left the cases open on all the 3/4" and 1" VTR and cleaned then with isp and swabs. You just had to careful to not catch the swab on the video head itself but they have huge amounts of open space to work in.

I assume DV camcorder heads have not introduced any new feature that this might cause a problem, though I would be concerned that in the tight confines, there might be some plastic or electronics that might not like getting iso on it.

Panasonic Technical maual states head cleaning and capstan and roller cleaning is reccomended every 100 hours. How that is done is not really explained, but you could use a cleaning tape, which is very easy to do, but is abrasive and can prematurely wear your heads. Or you could do the 99% isopropyl route. The problem is you can't get to the heads easily like you can in a betacam. You have to take a scary amount of the camera apart just to have access to manually cleaning the heads. And the screws are really really little. DO NOT CLEAN MANUALLY if you have any doubts or haven't done such a thing before. Maybe have a tech do it, as it is better for the heads than an abrasive tape, but overall maybe the tape is a good compromise.

BTW- reccomended head replacement at 1000 hours. The actual head costs something like $420, I have no idea of installation costs.
-Nate