I was filming a live event the other week..
The feed was going straight to a capture device...A tape was loaded for emergency sake, just in case the capture device hung up...

My question is, is there any wear on the heads while NOT recording? Or is it constantly running once a tape is popped in regardless??

Thx..

There should be no wear on the heads until you press the record button on the camera.

Alan

There should be no wear on the heads until you press the record button on the camera.

That's not exactly accurate. With tape inserted, the drum will spin for something like 4.5 minutes then stop, assuming it's plugged into AC power. It won't start spinning again until you press the red button. If on batteries, it will just shut down after 4.5 minutes to save battery power.

If that bothers you, you should be able to run without a tape inserted, or assign one of the configurable buttons to shut the drum down. I don't recollect how it's done since I did it on my A1 about a year ago.

As an aside, you might think about rolling tape even when recording to an external device. First, it's a backup in case something happens to your capture device. Also, it solves the archiving issue. BD or LTO tape would be my other options of choice.

Thanks for the tip Tripp..But the event I was taping, was a relatively low-medium paying gig, with lots of hours of footage. (3 days of dance competition).
The reason for my posting, was to verify whether or not I could include this into future decisions about my rates.
I realize that the camera was made to do this, but if there's unnessecary wear, then I think it's fair that the gig pay accordingly.

Tripp I didn't realise that the drum spun for 4.5 minutes when you insert a tape but that said if you have the camera switched on for an hour or more the the wear is going to be negligable and not worth worrying about IMHO.

Regards Alan

Page 27 of the manual (VCR Stop Function) explains what happens if you assign a Custom Key to basically stop the drum spinning and Page 70 explains how to assign it.