At a savings of about half the cost, we have been given an option to have the commercials we've recently done given to us on "evaluated stock." I have to admit I've never run into this so I'm asking the masses here for advice. We are going to be sending our spots to TV stations on Beta SP and would like to know if this is going to pose a problem vs. paying more for something new that we are going to never see again. Has anyone out there used the evaluated stock and have you had problems? I understand that new footage should probably not be trusted to it, but is stuff you're sending out OK for this?

Thanks much!
Chris

What is evaluated stock? Stock that is already used? If so,
get new tapes. Don't worth the risk...

Yes, these are aparently previously-used tape stock. Talking with a fellow video guy, he told me that all of the TV stations like CBS, NBC, ABC, all reuse tapes. Since this is going to be sent to a TV station for broadcast, it's going to get there some time before the spots are to air. So this would give time to get another and blame the dupe house on the mishap.

I know I wouldn't use it for critical stuff like new footage, but for this I'm think I'm going to recommend it as safe for the task at hand.

If the savings was minimal it might not be worth it, but it's going to cut our costs in half.

A new five minute Sony Betacam SP tape is just a little over 7 bucks these days. How many dubs are you doing? I would not use used stock for TV spot dubs.

These are coming from an outside source that has given us the choice of new or used tapes for our footage. Has anyone here in the broadcast community had problems with used tapes?

I know of a couple of people who had trouble re-recording their
own tapes. I would at least blank them (ie, leave lens cap on or
close iris and disconnect audio and record that to the whole tape)
before using them.

I got few months ago about 40 DVCAM (miniDV) tapes which were used only once. I blank them in magnet blanker and no problems at all.