Not only do you run a higher risk of dropouts, also you run a risk that the tape just will not play. I've had this happen once, tape would play fine in some cameras and not others but wouldn't play in any of our VCRs. Definately a good thing to avoid.

Filmed some gigs in LP and that is the worst thing you can do. I had dropouts, I was lucky to have 3 cameras so I had a lot of spare footage, but if you are doing a job for a client never touch the LP mode or you could have terrible surprises..

As they say, your mileage may vary. I've had to use LP mode quite a few times while shooting opera performances, and have never had a problem with dropouts. (Though I've never tried to play the tape in another camcorder.) Sometimes you simply have to have an uninterrupted take longer than 60 minutes, or 40 minutes with DVCAM.

A few months ago I was shooting an opera that ran 1 hr 45 minutes. Had to use an additional DV camera as a VCR piggybacked to my shooting camera with a firewire cable. That works fine as long as the audio is being recorded separately. My VX2000 cuts out on audio while the tape is unloading, which you have to do to keep the camera from going to sleep after running out of tape.

The only Time I have used the LP mode in my old TRV-350 was when I needed to move over one hour of D8 to a VCR tape. I PTed to tape in the camera in the camera's LP mode I just had to remember to change it back to SP mode before I did any more taping with the camera.

I have the sony vx2000's and have shot many ceremonies in the LP mode. I use the Panasonic master minidv tapes and have yet to have a problem with dropouts, or playing them. I have always used Panasonic tapes in my cameras and never switched brands which may help.

I've run into problems when a tape was previously used in SP mode; the time code gets very erratic around the beginning of the tape and any pauses if you try recording LP on top. I suspect the answer might be to wipe the tape in LP mode before starting.

That said, SP is definitely more reliable...

Thanks all so very much!

It seems it’s mostly a playback issue? Dropouts = missing frames transferred over to the computing station. But the 1’s and 0’s are there in either case.

From my analogue days I more or less knew LP was going to give less quality because of the speed of the tape. I am assuming this was because more information was being stored onto a faster moving tape, hence a richer picture.

I’m more of a hobbyist and use the same cam which shot the tape for firewire transfer. I have heard that some tapes shot it LP will not play back in devices other than the original cam.

But all in all, it’s safer to shot in SP insofar a transferring the material for editing?

Thanks again for the responses. Looks like in some cases LP will be ok, with a fresh tape and a quality one at that.

Paul

Digital is an entirely different animal than analog, and DV is thus entirely different from VHS or 8mm. The bits coming off the miniDV tape recorded at LP speed are EXACTLY the same as those coming off a different tape recorded at SP speed (for that matter, the bitstream is exactly as the one produced by a D8 camcorder recording on 8mm tape). All that's different is that the signal is less dominant over the noise level, so there is a greater chance of a bit error, which would show up in a severe case as a colored block in the video.

That said, I've shot hundreds of miniDV tapes at LP speed, and have had exactly 1 dropout. I've used the TDK tapes sold at Costco for about $4 a tape, and the recorded tapes (Sony camcorders) have played just fine on TV station decks.