Digital Master tapes used in HVR-Z1 ( HOW MANY TIMES CAN YOU USE THIS TAPE)
 

Can anyone tell me how many times they have used the same Digital Master tape in a Sony Z1 without any quality issues.?

once

Reuse tape? Why?

I just got my Z1 yesterday but DSE has said that he has reused the digital master tapes several times and never had a dropout.

The truth is, I have never reused one of the HDV tapes, but I am going to do so today. I have a tape that has unusable footage for the first 23 minutes, so I am going to tape over it today at the Dallas Zoo. I figure it should be OK, and if I am wrong, I will just take the kids back to the zoo another time.

But really, tape is a lot sturdier than people might think. And if you are not in the habit of shuttling back and forth all of the time, it will last a lot longer.

How many times can the little particles be expected to change polarity? Thousands. The real issue is as far as I can tell is the stretching of the tape through the mechanism. That's a problem - or will be eventually.

I am really working with the z1 for over a month now, used the "new" tape and the normal Premium. I had no dropout ever. Even with DV all the years.

And as I am talking about it: Also no MPEG artifacts and so on ... Am I one of the lucky users or are there many, that are talking about artifacts, problems with fast pans, unability of handheld shooting and so on, that never tried it themselves ?

BUT. To answer the original question:
If you have to, you can use the tape many times. I don't think it's a problem the first 10 times.

Peter

I appreciate the imput. All im trying to achieve with my digital master tapes is to drive the cost down by using each tape atleast three times and still maintain the same quality on the second and third time around (the same quality as the first time of use). Since the tapes are costing me $21.00 + freight from b&h. Three times of use would cost me about what im used to spending on a single panasonic tape with my agdvx100 .

3 times use?
Not worried about archiving the footage?
I posed a question regarding One-Pass tape, it should hold up, but I sure wouldn't make a practice out of it.

Hi Sean, I always archive. I just use sony excellence tape for archiving on a one time basis. Digital Master for shooting.
So far I have been using my Digital Master tapes three times with no dropouts or problems.