[LicensedTaximan]

Well the above thread says it all, with my old system a s-vhs jobbie I re-used my s-vhs tapes tapes quite a bit, but with my new outfit I would like to know how often it is recommended, by those who know better than I (Senu...Mark), how often I should re-use the mini dv tapes. The tapes I purchased by the way are the Sony HD types. Thanks in advance.

[redsox_mark]

You can reuse tapes... the only problem is that can increase chance of a dropout. The HD tapes should be more resistant to these. I still usually only use a tape once, but I'll occasionally use one a few times.

I am of the opinion that at the moment DV tape is the best archive medium. So until something better comes along I will continue to use tapes once and buy new. Incidentally got a pack of 2 TDK's for less than a fiver at Tescos last week marked down like short dated meat!!

I like TDK tape and like DVD's I doubt that most top TV brands make their own tape but outsource it probably from TDK.

[Johnmcl7]

That's a bit alarming, if I'd realised that I wouldn't have gone for a miniDV camcorder - in fact as it's not been dispatched yet (awaiting stock), I'm seriously considering cancelling it.

John

[Barbs]

Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

That's a bit alarming, if I'd realised that I wouldn't have gone for a miniDV camcorder - in fact as it's not been dispatched yet (awaiting stock), I'm seriously considering cancelling it.

John

I am about to buy one of these myself - so why such a strong reaction to this thread?

[Johnmcl7]

Originally Posted by Barbs

I am about to buy one of these myself - so why such a strong reaction to this thread?

I didn't realise you were only meant to use these tapes once, I've always just used them like vhs tape over and over which is what I planned for the HV10. Hence I'm planning on just going with an HDD camcorder.

John

Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

I didn't realise you were only meant to use these tapes once, I've always just used them like vhs tape over and over which is what I planned for the HV10. Hence I'm planning on just going with an HDD camcorder.

John

Please dont get me wrong ..there is no reason not to use DV tape over and over again like VHS tape but like VHS tape the more you do this the cance of problems increases. My point was that they are so cheap you dont have to re-use them. I dont re-use them as I want to keep my home videos for posterity. Whilst I have them on my external hard drive, that could crash. Recordable DVD's are not very robust and may have a limited lifetime. So the best long term archive media in my opinion is DV tape.

An HDD camcorder is great for overwriting but the only archive you have is either PC hard drive or DVD neither of which I trust longterm.

[Johnmcl7]

I don't find archiving an issue - for my photos (which are far larger than I expect my videos to be) I have them on an internal drive which is backed up regularly to two different external drives. Every month or so I sync the data to a desktop machine, I was planning the same for video - encoding the tapes to the PC then syncing the resulting videos to external hard drives and reusing the tapes. I guess for playing around it's worth using the same tape but for anything particularly important then use a new one.

I need to look into this further as I've seen another few sites now recommending not to use the tapes more than once.

edit: Ha, my camcorder just shipped unexpectedly - been sitting endlessly at awaiting stock, why does this all have to be so hard?!

John

[Barbs]

Thank god for that.... I was getting a bti paranoid and thought that I was missing something. For the sake of a few quid I'd be more than happy to retain the recordings on tape.

John - out of interest (and as I am about to buy) which model did you go for?

[Johnmcl7]

Originally Posted by Barbs

Thank god for that.... I was getting a bti paranoid and thought that I was missing something. For the sake of a few quid I'd be more than happy to retain the recordings on tape.

John - out of interest (and as I am about to buy) which model did you go for?

I went for the Canon HV10 - initially I decided on a standard definition hard drive camcorder as I didn't want the hassle of tape, DVDs were too big and hi-def HDD/DVD camcorders still seem in their infancy. The HV10 seemed to strike a good balance for me as it's small and light plus it's quite a bit cheaper than the HV20. It lacks HDMI, has a smaller battery, no 24P, weaker low light performance and poorer handling but I asked around and it still seems a decent camcorder.

Looks like it's going to arrive tomorrow which typically is my first day back on shift.

John

[rickyt]

I have a couple of MiniDV camcorders and never use the same tape twice .There reasonably cheap and will keep if stored corectly .

[LicensedTaximan]

Well I have bought, (as stated on the original thread) Sony's HD tapes for my new HV20 and I feel that re-using them several times will be ok, especially given their price point (although I paid a relativly low price given the high quality....£8 each, in a shop not the web).
On my old Panny s-vhs palmcorder I used my JVC s-vhsc tapes quite a few times without any problem. If I had bought the cheaper Sony mini dv tapes then maybe I would use them only once or twice, but not these babies.
I should mention that I'm going to edit and then transfer onto DVD (Verbatim ones for family stuff) and I already have transfered all my family s-vhs stuff onto duel layer Verbatim recordable DVD.

Originally Posted by LicensedTaximan

Well I have bought, (as stated on the original thread) Sony's HD tapes for my new HV20 and I feel that re-using them several times will be ok, especially given their price point (although I paid a relativly low price given the high quality....£8 each, in a shop not the web).
On my old Panny s-vhs palmcorder I used my JVC s-vhsc tapes quite a few times without any problem. If I had bought the cheaper Sony mini dv tapes then maybe I would use them only once or twice, but not these babies.
I should mention that I'm going to edit and then transfer onto DVD (Verbatim ones for family stuff) and I already have transfered all my family s-vhs stuff onto duel layer Verbatim recordable DVD.

Whilst I agree that Verbatim recordable DVD's are without doubt IMHO the best they are not very robust! A lot of people make the mistake in assuming recordable DVD's are as robust and long lived as commercially "pressed" film DVD's. They are most definitely not! I hope you are not one of those people? Indeed I have not seen any statistical projections on lifetime of DVDR's as yet.

PS good to see that you like me used JVC s-vhs-c previously IMHO a great format I used it 1989-1999. I have been using DV since 1999 and dont really see anything better other than HiDef around

Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

I don't find archiving an issue - for my photos (which are far larger than I expect my videos to be) I have them on an internal drive which is backed up regularly to two different external drives. Every month or so I sync the data to a desktop machine, I was planning the same for video - encoding the tapes to the PC then syncing the resulting videos to external hard drives and reusing the tapes. I guess for playing around it's worth using the same tape but for anything particularly important then use a new one.

I need to look into this further as I've seen another few sites now recommending not to use the tapes more than once.

john

Sorry to be a bit cynical but where are all these Pc's and external drives? Last month a friend of mine got burgled 4 Pc's and 5 external drives went, they took also every DVD/CD he had. They left 2 recent Sony LCD's though and left his Hi 8 and DV tape collection untouched a lthough they took his DV camcorder. At £2.50 per tape whats the issue?

Also I think you will find that videos take up a lot more disc space than photos. To retain in original DV quality you are looking at 13GB per hour or SP60 tape.

[Johnmcl7]

One external drive is kept at home, one is kept in my office, the internal one is normally with me (it's in a laptop) and the desktop is with my brother (hence it's only done once a month or so). So yes, if I'm mugged, my office is robbed, my home robbed and my brother's flat are all robbed simultaneously then I'm stuffed - I doubt that's going to happen though.

Videos may well take up more space than photos but I'm talking about my personal usage - which is occasional video and a lot of photos, hence why more space will be taken up by photos for me. When spending half a grand on a camcorder for occasional use, I hadn't planned on additional expense and it's pretty clumsy to have tapes everywhere - I had initially planned on an HDD camcorder which offers a lot more convenience, I'm starting to think that's what I should be sticking with.

John

[LicensedTaximan]

[QUOTE=Analogue;5119879] I hope you are not one of those people? (/QUOTE]

No I'm not I assure you, I do realise that recordable DVDs are totally different to the commercially pressed ones. But as I understand it Verbatims DVDs are (according to themselves) able to last about 100 years...er or basically a lifetime.
Either way as I have no intention of departing this mortal coil just yet I'm hoping these recordable DVDs will last long enough untill a non moving medium comes along so I can transfer all those family memories to something like maybe a small intergrated module that will hold heaven knows how much terrabytes, and in high quality for future generations.
The family stuff I had, and still have on TDK s-vhs tapes most certainly will not last indefinately and to transfer them onto duel layer Verbatim DVDs not only preserves them for, hopefully, a longer time span but also makes it far easier to navigate.

Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

One external drive is kept at home, one is kept in my office, the internal one is normally with me (it's in a laptop) and the desktop is with my brother (hence it's only done once a month or so). So yes, if I'm mugged, my office is robbed, my home robbed and my brother's flat are all robbed simultaneously then I'm stuffed - I doubt that's going to happen though.

Videos may well take up more space than photos but I'm talking about my personal usage - which is occasional video and a lot of photos, hence why more space will be taken up by photos for me. When spending half a grand on a camcorder for occasional use, I hadn't planned on additional expense and it's pretty clumsy to have tapes everywhere - I had initially planned on an HDD camcorder which offers a lot more convenience, I'm starting to think that's what I should be sticking with.

John

OK take your point about back up you seem to have a good regime if you keep it up.

Dont quite see your point on tape though If you can spend half a grand on a camcorder as you indicate, whats the price of an occasional tape costing less than a pint of lager? -particularly as you indicate only occasional usage?. Also these tapes are tiny with your occasional usage how many are you going to use in a year?

Also most decent digital cameras can shoot very reasonable full format video these days - so in your context why bother with a camcorder?

Originally Posted by LicensedTaximan

I hope you are not one of those people?

No I'm not I assure you, I do realise that recordable DVDs are totally different to the commercially pressed ones. But as I understand it Verbatims DVDs are (according to themselves) able to last about 100 years...er or basically a lifetime.

I have never seen this quote and having accidentally damaged one of their excellent DVD+R''s by dropping it onto the top of my printer I don't believe it. Over the last 10-15 years I have had innumerable problems with recordable CD's including Verbatims. CD-R's are far less complex and are more robust than DVD+/-R's.

Verbatims at least deliver 100% recordings and 100% playback in the short term

As I said I have not seen any real data on longevity but I did see a suggestion somewhere that 7 years was a likely average. So I hope your lifetime is longer than that?

[Johnmcl7]

Originally Posted by Analogue

OK take your point about back up you seem to have a good regime if you keep it up.

Dont quite see your point on tape though If you can spend half a grand on a camcorder as you indicate, whats the price of an occasional tape costing less than a pint of lager? -particularly as you indicate only occasional usage?. Also these tapes are tiny with your occasional usage how many are you going to use in a year?

Also most decent digital cameras can shoot very reasonable full format video these days - so in your context why bother with a camcorder?

Uhh - have you actually seen the quality from these digital cameras? It's pretty poor, no comparison to an standard camcorder never mind a high definition one. The sharpness is lacking with details lacking which also means it's difficult to compress/transcode to another format as the little quality there is proves difficult to preserve. Furthermore they chew through memory cards extremely fast, I would need a heck of a lot of SDHC cards to take with me. Finally and the most problematic issue is that no SLR camera has a movie mode, although an SLR like the E-330 is close to being able to offer such a mode sadly Olympus seemed to have dumped it's unique dual sensor design. I do have a compact camera which has one of the better video recording modes including 720p but when using it recently and looking over the resulting videos as usual I was not that happy with them especially compared to the high quality stills the SLRs can take.

I'm used to the digital era, I never liked using film for cameras - I much prefer being able to shoot over and over again on the same memory card so I don't feel I'm wasting anything when I take a shot. It's partially a mentality, I'd rather buy rechargeable AAs than use alkalines, the latter offer better voltage but once the alkalines are done that's it.

With regards to backups, I work in IT and all too familiar with hard drive failures - I hate having to tell people that their data is all lost and there's little can be done aside from forking out a few grand for data recovery. I've also had my flat broken into (the locks held but the heavy security doors didn't), photos are perhaps my most valuable data as they cannot be replaced whereas a lot of my other data is nothing special.

John

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

Videos may well take up more space than photos but I'm talking about my personal usage - which is occasional video and a lot of photos, hence why more space will be taken up by photos for me. When spending half a grand on a camcorder for occasional use, I hadn't planned on additional expense and it's pretty clumsy to have tapes everywhere - I had initially planned on an HDD camcorder which offers a lot more convenience, I'm starting to think that's what I should be sticking with.

Unless your personal usage is very unusual (or you don't use your camcorder at all) it is highly unlikely that your photos will take up more space. It depends on the format, but for DV or HDV 1 hour of video is about 12 GB. 12 GB would hold about 9000 6 MP pixel photos in highest quality setting. If you are more likely to shoot 9000 photos than 1 hour of video i am impressed.

Now regardless, if you only shoot an hour or 2 of video per year than maybe backup is no problem. If you've shot 100s of hours like I have, then trying to back that up on HDD would take multiple TB of storage.

[Johnmcl7]

Your photo calculations seem to be way out - as I've said already I am using SLRs, not some point and shoot (although even the LX2 needs a fair amount of filespace). A 10MP raw file takes up a lot more space than a 6MP jpeg (which I'm assuming you've based your calculations on), one of the bodies does have slightly lower file requirements as it compresses the raw file slightly but even then they take up a fair amount of space.

Now regardless, if you only shoot an hour or 2 of video per year than maybe backup is no problem. If you've shot 100s of hours like I have, then trying to back that up on HDD would take multiple TB of storage.

And therein lies the problem - I made it perfectly clear above I was referring to my personal usage not anyone elses. Starting to get a little frustrated with people thinking they know me better than I do myself despite the fact I've made my position and requirements clear.

John

[redsox_mark]

Sorry, I don't claim to know your situation. I was just trying to be helpful, as the size of video files is so large. If you've done the maths and your video storage requirements are indeed much less than your still photo requirements I apologise for questioning your requirements.

[LicensedTaximan]

Originally Posted by Analogue

I did see a suggestion somewhere that 7 years was a likely average. So I hope your lifetime is longer than that?

I did have the s***s on Monday and therefore was unable to go to work....but apart from that.

[senu]

Originally Posted by Johnmcl7

And therein lies the problem - I made it perfectly clear above I was referring to my personal usage not anyone elses. Starting to get a little frustrated with people thinking they know me better than I do myself despite the fact I've made my position and requirements clear.

John

John
I have Canon 30D ( and a less used Canon 350D) and Nikon D80 ( exclusively for use at work ) 8 and 10Mp respectively and shoot RAW almost exclusively

Even at that, The uncompressed Jpegs arent that small but Im perfectly happy with a couple of HDDs ( and DVDs for extra backup)

Similarly I have the Sony HC1 , FX1 and less often lately VX2100 for video

I am happy to keep video as tape based due to the cheap nature of tape : I find linear access is a small price to pay for the quality of DV AVI or m2t as left on tape even though I know Tape is reusable but far cheaper than say keeping Digital stills on Media cards

As such I can relate to your analogy with DSLRs vs Video

I dont think anyone is suggesting they know your circumstances better or indeed at all
I read the posts as trying to be helpful as HDD for archiving the video in its native HQ state is impractical at 13Gb /hr.

If you are happy to archive your video as mpeg2, DIVX , or Mpeg4... fair cop.. These are high quality compact formats. An audio analogy is to keep all your CDs and archive your music as Mp3s on HDD. If you only have 2 hrs of Video at 26Gb per year fine: It is generally rather ununsual to have such low amount of footage

Some folk still like their CDs and would prefer uncompressed formats despite all the relative inconvenience compared to mp3s or itunes


To the OP (LicensedTaximan ) , All I can say about consumer DVD media is that if you chose to rely on them , Use reputable brands, make duplicates, store them very carefully and reburn from time to time

[Johnmcl7]

Originally Posted by senu

John
I have Canon 30D ( and a less used Canon 350D) and Nikon D80 ( exclusively for use at work ) 8 and 10Mp respectively and shoot RAW almost exclusively

Even at that, The uncompressed Jpegs arent that small but Im perfectly happy with a couple of HDDs ( and DVDs for extra backup)

Similarly I have the Sony HC1 , FX1 and less often lately VX2100 for video

I am happy to keep video as tape based due to the cheap nature of tape : I find linear access is a small price to pay for the quality of DV AVI or m2t as left on tape even though I know Tape is reusable but far cheaper than say keeping Digital stills on Media cards

As such I can relate to your analogy with DSLRs vs Video

I dont think anyone is suggesting they know your circumstances better or indeed at all
I read the posts as trying to be helpful as HDD for archiving the video in its native HQ state is impractical at 13Gb /hr.

If you are happy to archive your video as mpeg2, DIVX , or Mpeg4... fair cop.. These are high quality compact formats. An audio analogy is to keep all your CDs and archive your music as Mp3s on HDD. If you only have 2 hrs of Video at 26Gb per year fine: It is generally rather ununsual to have such low amount of footage

Some folk still like their CDs and would prefer uncompressed formats despite all the relative inconvenience compared to mp3s or itunes


To the OP (LicensedTaximan ) , All I can say about consumer DVD media is that if you chose to rely on them , Use reputable brands, make duplicates, store them very carefully and reburn from time to time

I agree you analogies, I'm happy to keep my CDs as mp3s and going to take a similar approach with my video. The video from my digital camera compresses poorly and even at its full rate (5.5GB/Hr) the quality is still less than compressed footage from an SD miniDV camcorder.

With regards to photos, I spend a lot more time on them and often take older pictures and work them from a different angle. With videos I'm planning on putting them together and leaving them at that

The HV10 has arrived today and it's a really sleek little device(smaller than I was expecting) so I think I'll stick with MiniDV and see how it goes. If it's a complete disaster then I'm sure I can get a reasonable resale for it - will experiment with the tapes over the next week.

John

[senu]

Although I still feel tape is the best video VFM archive ( A big plus over HDD ( AVCDH and SD Mpeg2 for now) an alternate strategy I employ is to make ISO images of DVD video discs and burn them onto Ext HDD..

Although I have lost a few HDDs in the past ( Last year 2X300Gb in 2 weeks just became costly paperweights with a lot of lost data)
HDD are generally reliable and DVD videos Ive made since 2002/2003 Can be viewed by mounting the Images or by burning fresh DVDs off them