Yes, I'm with Peter. It's not worth the risk that you might lose an unrepeatable shot and it's also nice to have the original film in case you might want to re-edit at some time, I've also felt that the cost of new tape is pretty small beer when compared with the rest of your outlay on, for example, the camera, the PC and the editing programme.. .

Richard

Capture what you want to keep, then dispose of the old tapes. They may look fine, but they've already started to degrade after a couple of years, and may leave stuff on the camera heads.

I disagree. I do media restoration, and have transferred family audio tapes from 1949, one of the first years that magnetic recording tape, as we know it today, was available to the consumer. The audio on those tapes was as good as the day they were recorded, and the oxide did not shed.

Yes, there was a period where many companies in the industry produced bad tape, and Bob Grant (farss) and others have posted many times about the problem, and the solution of baking the tape.

However, I think the advice of treating your tape like it is going to fall apart in the near future is simply wrong. I have re-recorded on analog tape, DV tape, and HDV tape, and have never had any problems, nor do I expect any. I have also transferred a LOT of tape for other people, and the only problems I have had are due to over-use of the VHS 6-hour recording mode on cheap equipment, followed by bad storage. The bad storage actually didn't affect the tape, but it makes the really cheap plastic cassette housing warp.

The only issue of recording over previously recorded tape is, of course, screwing up and destroying something you meant to keep. If you don't have a really good backup system, then I would advise against re-using the tape, but only for that reason.

Probably beyond the scope of this thread - but there are several potential issues with 2nd -nth recordings over a helical scan tape - particularly in a camera that can be set to different standards of recording.
So this applies to Mini-DV with multi-standards recording and time-base control. The issue is deep and I shall not cover here. It has been dealt with extensively by field tests of advanced users. I suggest visiting the appropriate thread (now years old) on the dvinfo.net forum.

I moved into tapeless recording only about 18 months ago. Previously, I used HDV and before that DV. I've always regarded a tape once used as a 'known good' item.Obviously as mentioned above, you'll get into a wear and tear situation, so I would use normal DV tapes such as the Panasonic DVC60 5 times before retiring them, and the better quality Panasonic M-DV63 HD up to 10 times. The ONLY time I ever had a big problem was a new Sony DV tape many years ago. About 30secs of dropout. I sent the tape off to Sony, who very 'generously' gave me a new one. Which is the reason for the Panasonic workflow. Once bitten twice shy. ;-)

It may be worth pointing out that many people advocate "blacking" any tape before using it (recording black onto it in order to ensure the whole tape has an unbroken timecode). In doing so when you come to record you're already using it a second time.

In the old analog world, a periodic degaussing was essential lower the noise floor. But these tapes are digital. Different world.

I use only the iconic blue-wrapped Sony miniDV tapes for my HDV shoots. The 60 minute tapes can be reused many, many times. The only benefit I see in pre-recording a tape is that on playback one can check for dropouts (I've used HDVsplit, which can be set to stop the camera when encountering a playback dropout). But since I've rarely seen a dropout, I don't do the pre-record. In any event, these tapes are only $2, so there is little reason to recycle.

I frequently use the 80 minute Sony tapes. These are pushing the limits because the tape is thinner. Once as an experiment I kept re-recording the same tape and discovered that after about 10 uses the camcorders would sometimes refuse to record at the very beginning of the tape. They would, however, record normally if I simply advanced the tape 30 seconds or so. It would be prudent to not re-use an 80 minute tape more than a few times.

There are several upscale grades of miniDV tapes from the regular blue Sony boxes; they usually promise a higher level of QC and reduced dropouts. I've used them in the past. But tape-making has become such a mature process I don't think one gains much over the blue boxes.

These days I don't think you can even find a tape-based camera, but the equipment I have works well and I like the fact that my raw footage is archived without any additional effort on my part. Flash memory is sweet, though.

I don't see any value in recording to HDV from AVCHD. The latter is 1920 horizontal pixels, while HDV is 1440. You would lose horizontal resolution.

Define "many times" .... IMHO, a mini-DV tape is an initial recording medium, not something to record over and over.

I've worked in a public access TV station that, until recently, used mini-DV tapes. Some people would use a tape to record weekly spots for their show using the same tape. After a while that tape would eventually become unplayable.

It may be fine for three or four recordings, but fifteen or twenty (or more)?? Likely not.

All digital recording media is prone to errors, that's why there is robust error correction built into the various formats, it uses interleaved, redundant data and some advanced code to determine if an error has occurred and then it can use the redundant data to completely correct the error. In fact, without error correction, digital storage and transmission simply couldn't work. Once the error rises above a certain threshold, it can often be concealed (but not perfectly) by the error correction algorithm making an educated guess. Error concealment works acceptably well for things like audio and video since a minor anomaly will usually go unnoticed, if it is critical that not a single bit changes, as in storing computer software or a database, then error concealment is useless. Once the amount of damaged data rises above the algorithm's ability to correct or conceal it, all bets are off. Even brand new Mini-DV tapes have imperfections in the oxide which require error correction, generally all of them can be easily corrected but reuse the tape and the inevitable damage will eventually exceed the algorithm's ability to correct or conceal the errors. How far you want to push it is entirely up to you.

In my facility where we use a process of black striping, and bulk degaussing, and multi-standards cameras - we have used a rule of thumb as follows:

1) Two (2) - to three (3) recordings are acceptable for camera originals of the first quality. What this really means is that thru the process the tape gets used at least five times.
2) after step 1 - the tape is either preserved as archive for the third and last camera original - or thrown into a scrap-bin for occasional practice taping - but nothing critical.
3) after about 8 passes from totals of step 1 and step 2 - the tape is destroyed.

It is not the number of recordings you make on a tape, but the number of times the tape is passed through the deck, referred to in the business as 'passes'.

In earlier times, a tape was not at it's peak performance until such time as it had around 10 to 15 passes on it. This was regarded as 'polishing' the surface of the tape, and there is evidence that this polishing improved the tape up to a point, from then on, it would deteriorate.

It was quite normal for broadcast facilities to re-use tapes over and over again until the dropout count got to an unacceptable level. Broadcast tape was a very expensive item back then, and re-use was sometimes the only method available, as it was also common to allocate a quantity of tapes to a show or project.

The lifetime of a tape used for digital recording and replay should be greater than an analogue recording, in that the recording method used forward error correction algorithms to allow error recovery, as well explained by John Cline.

In general terms, the lifetime of a tape should be around 100 passes, but depends on the quality of the tape and the cleanliness of the machine it is played on.

PS. I forgot to mention that the re-use of video tape caused a quite famous occurrence to become legendary, the wiping of early episodes of Doctor Who, but that is another story.

Thanks for all the information everybody. It looks like we have some mixed opinions in here.

That's interesting what you said johnmeyer. I've always had the feeling that my various recordings would still exist and be functional long after I'm gone. That's the main issue for me though. I don't want several bits of content on those tapes to be preserved. There's some embarrassing content on them that showcases moments of extreme frustration and foolishness on my part. There may even be bits of accidental nudity (such as for shower and toilet scenes) lol.

Before I embarked on the daunting task of going through my 70+ collection of Mini-DV tapes, I figured that if there was anything on the tapes that I didn't want on there that I could just record over that specific part... but that can be tricky/risky, cause you could easily end up recording over something useful that occurs after the clip you want to remove. Now it's gotten to the point where as I go through them I see so many different little bits that I'd like to dispose of.. and these bits are in and around keep-able footage.

The bulk of my tapes have only been recorded on once, and there's a handful that have been recorded over. I had planned to black out all the tapes, then transfer from the computer the footage that I wanted to keep. I'm thinking that just buying new tapes for this is the route to go. The problem is that I would need a bunch, and the cost can add up. The past several years I've bought 3-packs of the blue-wrapped Sony Mini-DV tapes at Wal-Mart, which costs about $16. So riredale, if you or anyone can let me know where I can get tapes for a great price like 2 bucks each then I'd be quite grateful.

Once I get everything transferred onto new tapes, then I can black out all my old tapes and sell them as a big lot on eBay, instead of just tossing them in the trash.

The HD footage that I have was originally recorded and captured from the Mini-DV tapes that I have, so hopefully I can transfer that back onto new tape in good quality... hopefully just as good as a fresh recording. The bulk of my footage is in plain ole' Standard Def DV though.

I've always heard of warnings of drop-outs, but luckily I've never had that problem. I'm not even totally sure what exactly that is.

That incident with the early episodes of Doctor Who getting wiped reminds me of how a big chunk (like the first 10 years or so) of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson were lost, due to getting taped over.

Don't muck around putting DV back on tapes. Hard disk space is quite cheap really and easy to backup and check. Just edit your DV AVI files and put them on a removable hard disk. The editing can be lossless, so you need not lose any quality. You could also put them on a Blu-ray data disc if you see any advantage.

As well as it's about 178,392,145.3 times easier to retrieve the footage from a hard disk than from the tapes the next time you want to use or view it. Tape isn't economical either. A good 2TB removable drive can be had for about $150 and will hold 150 hours of DV, or about $1/hour. Tape costs about $6 and up per hour, if you can even find them at that price anymore.

You should also consider the likelihood of tapes becoming progressively more unusable as both tapes and cameras/decks stop working over time. I have a mountain of tape equipment lying around the house, both audio and video. The number of units still functional after 30 years is pitifully small. :(

MadMav, you can buy the Sony tapes for about $2 here or here.

Much as we might prefer otherwise, our video memories aren't worth much to future generations. Still, it would be fun to go through all your old tapes, pull them in to Vegas, do a major housecleaning, and then put them back out to some storage medium. As mentioned, you can use tape, hard disc, DVD, or even BluRay. Which medium will live the longest? Probably DVD, but you'll only get a couple of hours on a disk, and rendering will take time. Maybe simplest to just leave the edited files on a hard drive, or put them back to tape (but then you'll be stuck with spanning video over succeeding tapes if you want to fill the tapes to capacity).

@riredale "Much as we might prefer otherwise, our video memories aren't worth much to future generations" You gotta be kidding!! All of the kids in my family (and my brother and sister's) almost BEG my dad to put on his super 8/16 stuff of us as kids. One of the biggest reasons a couple choose to record their wedding is for future generations.

I'd certainly agree with the hard disc option. It's a big job capturing all to Vegas, then editing. (I did similar myself recently with even older VHS, S-VHS, and Hi 8 tapes.) All family stuff of the kids and holidays etc. Definitely DON'T put it all back onto tape though! Make various copies. HDD, DVD, Blu-ray. It's hedging your bets. Then BURN those tapes with the embarrassing stuff!! ;-)

[I]Much as we might prefer otherwise, our video memories aren't worth much to future generations.[/I]
I am sure that isn't true for every one.

I just purchased a Retro8 machine to digitize my fathers 8mm films and my grand fathers 8mm films. These contain scenes from my mother as a baby and then my father's films got me and my brother in it and my videos got my children's growing up. While at the time when my father filmed me as a kid I didn't appreciate it that much, I do now. I also can see one of my daughters to carry on that "tradition" and extend the collection of family memories. Maybe by that time, it will all be converted to holograms and shown on the holodeck?

I agree about old material, it is well worth preserving. My father-in-law shot a lot of 9mm center sprocket film back in the 40s and 50s, and I went to great lengths to transfer this to a file based system. I then put it on a batch of DVDs and gave copies to all members of the family.

About two years ago I found a mysterious compact cassette and played it, only to find it was a recording of 4 old men who intentionally got together one Sunday afternoon at their church in 1951 to talk about their experiences in World War 1. It was originally recorded on a reel-to-reel recorder and then later copied to the cassette. I contacted our War Museum and they were very keen to get hold of the tape for preservation and transcribing.

I never throw anything out.

You have 71 DV tapes? Here's what I'd do.

1. Get the big disk drive that several people have suggested, and copy the tapes to that drive. You need to decide, before you begin, whether you want to capture each tape as one big file, or whether you want to use timecode scene detection so that each scene is captured as a separate file. I've done it both ways, but I prefer the separate files because it gives you more flexibility. Just make a separate folder for each tape.

2. Once you have all the tapes on disk, if you are worried about certain content, put the files from the tape on the Vegas timeline and scrub through it. If you captured so that each scene is a separate file, you don't even have to scrub: just use a shortcut key to move to the beginning of the next event. If you don't find any objectionable content on a tape, move on to the next tape.

3. If you find a tape that has something you don't want, then while the content is on the Vegas timeline, cut out the parts you don't want, and when you're finished, record it back to the same tape.

4. Save your original tapes!!! Tape is the one proven archival formal. Yes, I've seen all the posts in this forum about tape horror stories, but you'll find someone will post something about the longevity of whatever format is under discussion: in forty years how will you find a controller to interface to a disk drive? Are the mechanics in disk drives likely to be viable in twenty years?

The advantage to tape, CDs, and DVDs is that they do not have an integrated playback mechanism and therefore only the media has to survive.

That's good advice johnmeyer. If I were to do that then I suppose it'd be a good idea to black out the tape first...

One problem I have is that my videos are all mixed up. For instance, the beginning of a tape will be the end shoot of a short film, followed by a birthday party, followed by a vlog etc... It would be good to gather all of the footage from the same project together on the same tapes. This would probably not be as practical though, and would become more time consuming. Maybe this is a common thing. I mean, if you had a tape and you shot one really short video that ended up being 5 minutes, then it'd be a shame to waste the remaining 55 minutes.

The question is how to organize all this on the tapes themselves. What I was planning on doing was keeping the videos all randomly shuffled around (this kinda thing is bound to happen anyway), and placing them in order of the date that the recordings were shot. I've been going through and writing the month/year on the edges of the tapes. Then If I happen to need some old raw footage I can pretty well estimate which tape (or tapes) to check. As I list everything on the label I write down the minute mark that it occurs. This can get kinda messy, so I'm planning on printing out labels... yeah, I'm kind of obsessive compulsive lol... but I just like the secure feeling of having my s**t together.

I was even thinking about numbering the tapes along with the dates. Then I could have a document on my computer that I can search that has a list of the contents on each tape.

One thing that I need to be cautious of is the beginning of the recording that I want to capture onto the tape getting cut off. It seems like when I've tried to do this before about the first 5 seconds of the video would not record onto the tape. I guess there's a delay. This may even be the case with the end of your video.

A far as longevity goes, I think that it's a good idea to store your content onto several different archival mediums.

I got a dumb question which I forgot to ask last time. By 'passes' do you mean the number of times that your tape has been re-winded or fast-forwarded? I thought that was a VHS kinda problem... and even with that I've always been a bit skeptical as to how worn down or disintegrated that the tape actually becomes from this.

Traditionally, passes do not include fast forward or rewinds, only recording or playing where the rotary heads are scanning the tape surface.

Sadly, just about every video tape device manufactured since around 1990 or so has the tape in contact with the heads even during rewind and playback. It's not as much wear on the tape surface as during record/play, but it's still wear.