Most of the pro's throw the tape away after one use .

JJK

>Most of the pro's throw the tape away after one use .<

I reuse my DV tapes several times and know others that do the same. (we are all pros).

Gary

CFRN, A-Channel, Global etc. reuse their DVCAM tapes many times, as does my employer and side business. I agree the old Sony "Premium" miniDV tapes were crap but the Sony DVCAM tapes have a fairly thick mylar backing and can be used again and again. Same with BetacamSP/SX! The broadcasters' news departments would bankrupt the Networks if they could get just one pass out of a tape.

Firstly its pretty hard to "bulk erase" any digital tape. Put simply because its just 1s and 0s you need a very strong field to flip the magnetic domains around. Thats one advantage of using digital in the first place and why its better for archiving. You could just run it back through a VCR and record black or whatever on it but unless there's a really good reason to get rid of whats on the tape I'd avoid doing it, your reducing the life of the tape and weaing out the VCRs heads.

If you are recycling tapes put a sticker on them with numbers in boxes on it and black one out each time you reuse it. Five times seems a good number.

And read the instructions, if your tapes have had a lot of temperature excursions spool them to equalise the tension before recording or playback.

Tell me who these pros are. I'll send them an empty box with prepaid shipping and they can throw those tapes out to me!

I am not sure what the pros do, nor do i think i want to know. If throwing the tapes away after one use is their style than that is fine. I was just wondering if in general there was a better way of reusing a miniDV tape than just taping over it. I have pretty good quality Panasonic miniDV tape that i use. In fact the reason why i purchased them, and paid a little more per tape, was because they were supposed to have a better build quality than regular consumer grade tapes.

I guess my original question had more to do with generally accepted procedures in reusing tapes. So, Professionals need not apply.

Thanks.

I'm certainly no pro and can't afford to throw tapes out after one use.

IMHO you've made a good choice with the Panasonic stock.

As I said before, I'd just tape over it. If you don't want to go to the trouble of keeping track of how many times you've used it, you'll soon know when its time to ditch it, once you start to get drop outs its time for the bin.

To give yo a benchmark, the place I work at uses the one tape for testing cameras after the've been hired, it probably gets used once a day to record a few minutes of video and we get at least three months use out of it before we start to get dropouts however we don't go back over the same piece of tape all the time.

It doesn't seem to be related so much to the tape going over the head as the shuttling putting tiny creases in the tape.

I normally ues a new tape for each job and then archive that original footage after i capture and edit and print back to a master. throwing out a tape doesn't make sense.. and its pretty easy just to keep original footage for future reference.

On topic: Many guys I know who use Canon XL1/GL1/2 or Vony VX1000/2000 "black" their their minDV tapes before use to ensure contiguous timecode. The reason for this is the prosumer cameras don't have user definable TC and always start tapes at 00:00:00;00 (at least that is what they told me when I asked your question) and the blacking ensures unbroken time code despite many starts and stops, power ups and shut downs. That is probably as close as I can come to answering your question. Often I shoot and hand over the tapes without ever watching them. This is why if I am using recycled tape and charging the client new tape replacement rate I use a VCR (never a camera) to "black" the Beta or DVCAM tape. Key tip: always run 30 seconds of bars at the start of every tape to ensure no one ever knows if the tape is not actually first pass new.

Peter

The "black" tape method sounds good. Now how do i tape a black screen to record over what is on the tape?

Peter's right I think - also *might* make for better results period according to some sources I've read. I *Think* the bulk erase stuff comes from analog tape - used to be able to find/buy bulk erasers quite easily for cheap money. Personally I don't think this is the case any longer as I was looking for one last year to de-gauss a TV (some idgit set a large speaker - magnet down - on it).

I spend a lot of money on tapes (relatively). The original gets archived, then the 1st edit gets saved as 2 copies on 2 different tapes, then the final gets 2 tapes. I do that just because I want to ensure I can go back to any point in the edit and not worry about bad tape. Kind of expensive.

However, I was just on Ebay and saw some great deals on I think Panasonic DV tapes from some true "power sellers" over there. Think I'll be buying bulk now.

Here's an example.

i have 35 dv tapes kicking around at home, all kids video in the past 5years, i only use each tape once but i didnt throw them away LOL, just keep them as master tape. for job i reuse the mini dv tape and i dont see any problem there, but i wouldnt go for more than 5 times, still good quality.
BTW I AM NOT A PRO.

Does anyone know how to "Black" a tape like PB suggested earlier in this thread? HOw do i record just a steady stream of a black screen in order to record over what is on the tape?

I put the lens cap on, cut out the audio to zero and press record. Is there something I'm missing here - apologies if I have.

Grazie

Nope you are not missing anything. I just didnt think of recording with the lens cap on. I was always under the impression that my camcorder wouldnt start taping unless the cap was off or there was an av source hooked up to it. Will try taping with the cap on later tonight.

I use a high power tape Degausser, works great and completely wipes out everything on the tape.

My apologies to the Pro's. I have successfully patched all of the bullet holes in my
body. I was not thinking of Beta SP/DV tapes just MiniDV and brain failure did
occur. I normally use the MiniDV tape for taking then capture to V-4
then label the tape and archive it. Then buy a new tape. So I end up using a new
tape every time. I would never think of tossing a Beta tape as it might bounce back
and hit me in the head.


JJK

Perhaps the manufacturers have data showing how many times a tape has to be used before dropouts occur. My gut feel, however, is that it has to be "hundreds," based on my own empirical evidence a couple of years ago.

I was using Studio7 to edit 14 hours of raw video down to a 1-hour epic. One of the nifty features of that NLE is that one can capture a lower-quality video version to the PC the first time around. Rather than needing 13GB per hour, Studio7 would only require only about 1GB. In this way, I had full use of the complete 14 hours of video, yet did the whole project on a 40GB drive (this was back in 2001).

Once the editing was done, you then told Studio7 to go back to the original tapes and build the final product by re-capturing the needed clips at full resolution. I was fascinated to watch the program drive the tapes forward, then rewind, then play, then rewind, then fast-forward, etc. Since I was a newbie, I made lots of mistakes, and did re-captures many times.

Bottom line: after all that abuse, not a single dropout in the final capture.