I shoot mainly in DVcam on a Sony V1E using panasonic pro mini DV tapes (I generally avoid shooting in HD as those tapes are much more expensive). I have recently started a video production business and want to make sure I am using the best quality DV tapes now that people are paying for my work.

Panasonic pro mini DV tapes have been excellent in the past, but Sony's Premium Mini-DV tapes are cheaper and also seem to do a good job. Once I've got the best/most suitable tape, I will be sticking with it so I'm not switching between two different manufacturers, which I've heard is a bad idea!

I'm still shooting in DVcam. You guys will know much more about this than me -does anyone have any suggestions?

Hi again Rob.
I use Sony Digital Master tapes, they are expensive, but I reuse them up to 30 times. All edited fotage is archived onto Sony Premiums and HDD. The benefits of the Master tapes is there is much less risk of dropouts. Having said that I have used cheap Sony Premium tapes extensively in the past, and never had a single problem with then. Using Master tapes to record on does give you peace of mind.

I generally avoid shooting in HD as those tapes are much more expensiveShooting in HDV doesn't require any different tape than DVCAM. Regular MiniDV tapes work fine, and they're cheap enough that you don't have to re-use them.

Many discussions on this right here in this very forum.

Thanks for all the advice!

And Adam - I'll check out those threads on HD recording. Cheers for the heads up.

Rob,

As someone else mentioned HD records on the same tapes as standard defintion. With my V1 I started out using some Panny tapes because they were highly recommended in this forum and some others. However after a year or so of using them I got a batch that had dropout issues so I started researching again. I discovered that a lot of people were using the basic Sony DV tape to tape HDV with no droput issues whatsoever. That convinced me to test them and I have used about 50 tapes between my two Sony V1 cameras with no dropout issues at all. These are tapes I buy online for just over two bucks each.

Hi Rob,

I am another Sony V1 owner. I've been through the issues and here's where it comes to for me.

For SD video, I'll happily use the cheap domestic "red" Sony tapes unless it is a mega-important project.

For HDV, I've learnt to use the slightly more expensive Sony "blue" tapes as errors are much more critical when recording HDV. You can use the premium master tapes too if you wish.

I've learnt the hard way. Hope this helps you avoid the pain of experience.

Andrew