What's the life of the average Mini-DV tape?

[`helios]

Hey everyone,

How many write/rewrite cycles can the average Mini-DV tape take? I think Jason mentioned that he goes through quite a few....


Thanks

[Jason Dunn]

I haven't seen any hard facts on this - it's mostly a matter of personal preference. I tend to between four and six, but I've yet to notice any difference in quality. You'd need to do some pretty hardcore testing - recording the same scene over and over, then doing screen grabs and comparing the quality. I've yet to see anyone do this, but it would be interesting to see. :-)

[Gary Sheynkman]

I haven't seen any hard facts on this - it's mostly a matter of personal preference. I tend to between four and six, but I've yet to notice any difference in quality. You'd need to do some pretty hardcore testing - recording the same scene over and over, then doing screen grabs and comparing the quality. I've yet to see anyone do this, but it would be interesting to see. :-)

I suppose that there would be deteriation every time you record over it. To the untrained eye though, the differences between the first couple of times are nonexistant. I would be interesting to see some high quality video (cough gl2) degrade after 10 or so scenes

[Crocuta]

I suppose that there would be deteriation every time you record over it. To the untrained eye though, the differences between the first couple of times are nonexistant. I would be interesting to see some high quality video (cough gl2) degrade after 10 or so scenes

The recording is purely digital, so there won't be any degradation of image quality. That's a purely analog concept. If your DV tape starts to wear out, you'll start to see dropped frames. If you see no dropped frames, then there is no loss. DV images suffer no more degradation than does a computer program copied from one hard disk to another. The fact that it's tape instead of a platter really doesn't matter, except that the tape can eventually lose its ability to hold clear 1's and 0's. If you expect to reuse your tapes a lot, then the best thing to do is to always record at standard speed. Each bit of your digital recording covers more tape surface that way and is less likely to be corrupted if the tape begins to lose integrity.

[Jason Dunn]

The recording is purely digital, so there won't be any degradation of image quality. That's a purely analog concept. If your DV tape starts to wear out, you'll start to see dropped frames.

Interesting...I had always thought there would be some sort of degredation as the tape became physically distressed. I didn't really grasp that I was thinking in analog terms. 8O Thanks for teaching me something new. :-)

[Suhit Gupta]

The recording is purely digital, so there won't be any degradation of image quality. That's a purely analog concept.
Yeah, very interesting, I thought that they wore out too.

Suhit

[Crocuta]

I do want to be clear, for anyone else who reads this. I'm not saying that the tape itself doesn't wear out. It's a physical thing winding on and off spools and running across heads. It will wear out if you keep using it. It's just that your DV images will go along being recorded perfectly right up to the time that some piece of the tape can't hold the magnetic 1's and 0's any more. Then that piece will be unreadable and you'll get a dropped frame. It's just like a bad sector on an old floppy disk. Of course that does affect your DV images since a frame is missing, and if lots of them were missing, you'd be in trouble. So I still don't use my DV tapes more than a few times, since I don't know for sure how long the tapes will last before they start to have problems, and I'm risk averse. What I do is use a tape a couple of times, then use that one for archiving a finished project.

[Gary Sheynkman]

what would you say is the best way to keep your videos then?

Detachable HDs or just keep a "master" copy of the mini-dv??

[ryaninc]

A friend of mine who owns his own video business gave me some advice on this very topic. He does weddings and other events with a camera that's...well, let's just say I wish I could afford that baby!

Anyway, when I got my DV camera, he advised me to only use one tape three times. He said that miniDV tapes have a lubricant on them which runs out with each pass through the camera heads. Once the lubricant is gone, the tape becomes like sandpaper and damages the recording heads.

He also said not to mix brands of tapes. Different manufacturers use different types of lubricants and mixing them can cause similar damage.

I've never read anything official about this, but he's been doing it long enough to know what he's talking about and I trust him. :wink:

P.S. I'm new to DMT (I spend my time at PPCT) and I just noticed the Smiley's over there. Where's Mr. Green? I don't like having to dig for him...I like him to be right there next to the post. :mrgreen:

[Jason Dunn]

Anyway, when I got my DV camera, he advised me to only use one tape three times. He said that miniDV tapes have a lubricant on them which runs out with each pass through the camera heads. Once the lubricant is gone, the tape becomes like sandpaper and damages the recording heads. He also said not to mix brands of tapes. Different manufacturers use different types of lubricants and mixing them can cause similar damage.

I've heard the same thing actually, although I heard that it was actually a GOOD thing to switch tape brands now and then to prevent the build-up of too much of one type of lubricant. This is funny, it's almost like an urban myth - no one really knows for sure. ;-)

P.S. I'm new to DMT (I spend my time at PPCT) and I just noticed the Smiley's over there. Where's Mr. Green? I don't like having to dig for him...I like him to be right there next to the post. :mrgreen:

We're trying to get our emoticons in sync, fear not. ;-)

[ryaninc]

Interesting! I'll have to do more research on this. My family is going on a big vacation in June (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole crowd) and I'm the one making the video of the trip. I'm going to be using lots of taps to document it all and I should make sure I get the most out of my camera while doing the least damage. :?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Oh dear me, I've used a tape for like 10 times already, my poor 1st gen Sony MiniDV cam must be damaged now. =P