Ulf,

Yes, I got an A1, and love it so far.

Is that the Sony HDM-63VG you're talking about?

Thanks.

K

The recommendation to use better tapes is fueled by the fact that HDV uses a long (15-frame) GOP for recording. With SD, if a single frame gets corrupt it's no big deal. Just one frame is lost. With HDV if a single frame gets corrupt, it destroys the GOP with is dependency on delta data from the B and P frames therefore you have an immediate 15 frame loss! That's 1/2 second in NTSC land. So because a drop can do more damage, it is recommended that you use tapes that minimize drops.

I use HDV tape for things that I cannot reshot (e.g., an event that takes place once) and regular DV tapes for recording tutorials or other shoots where I can just go back and do it over if it I get drop-outs. I have not had any trouble with DV tapes and have never had to reshoot anything so if you can't pass the cost of HDV tapes on to your customer, you could use DV tapes. It's a game of chance but isn't everything?

I recently bought the Sony hard drive recorder and so I will be mostly using DV tapes in the future as a backup with the hard drive being my primary source.

Use the box of DVM60s and judge for yourself.

~jr

We sell 1,000s of those same Sony tapes for use in our HDV cameras. We're yet to have a complaint and the number of lost GOPs I've seen even on our many times used and abused test tapes I could count on the fingers of one hand.

HDV was touted as being more robust than DV and from what I've seen it lives up to that quite well. Of course if you get a bad enough error in a HDV recording and the error correction cannot correct it them you get a really bad outcome. Main cause of this though seems to be a head clog or faulty camera and no tape will make that any better.

The really odd thing is the only time we've had clients complain about tape is when they used the more expensive "HDV" tapes. I have no explaination for this but it is a more rigid base, possibly that causes problems with head contact in some transports. So now, even though we make more money selling that premium tape we don't push it at all.
So from my experience you're better off keeping your gear clean and dry and well serviced than worrying about using expensive tape.

Bob.

Yes, or the PHDVM-63DM - I've been told that the two tapes are the same, just the wrapping different.

/Ulf

Then I'll keep dipping into my stock of DVM60s...thanks for the feedback, all.

K

After I purchased my xh-a1 I used standard sony DV tapes for a while, but when I began to use the 24F mode & standard DV tapes I noticed a few dropouts in some of my footage, so I switched to the sony HDV tapes and haven't noticed any since.

I've been using a Sony HDV tape for a few weeks now. I've taped over the entier thing ~4 times now. I would record ~30 minutes, reqind, capture, go back to the end point, record again, capture, rewind whole tape, etc. i'm on my 5th time now. no dropouts yet. I figured what I'm doing is a good test of how much abuse the tape will take. then I'll switch to a normal miniDV tape (what I'm doing can be re-recorded if necessary so I'm not worried about when the tape crapps out).

According to Sony's published specs that's when you'd be better served using the more expensive Master tapes. Upto a few passes over the heads their figures show no difference between the tapes and I figure that most don't run a tape over heads anymore than necessary.

Bob.

Tape has been discussed many times on this board, which a search will verify.

I'd assume a premium tape would differ in possibly two ways--

(1) it's made from materials that are superior but more expensive to produce

(2) regular tape is somehow tested to some standard during the manufacturing process, with tape passing the test getting the "premium" label and everything else getting the "standard" label.

I normally use the blue Sony tape. I was shocked to get several dropouts in a row when using a brown Sony HDV tape some months back. I had expected to never have to worry about dropouts at all with the more-expensive stuff.

As for tape re-use, I have seen tapes shuttled dozens of times back and forth with no increase is dropouts. I suppose it certainly could happen if the tape literally wears out, for example in a kiosk application where a tape runs continuously.

As an aside, I have a VCR (yes, a VCR!) set up near my rowing machine, which I use while exercising in the morning to watch the automatically-recorded previous night's news shows. Same tape has been used in that machine for maybe 5 years now, with thousands of passes and rewindings. Still works great, with absolutely no observable deterioration. Granted, this is an analog situation, but I'm still impressed.