I am flying to the Dominican Republic to do a doc on the prisons and some medical missionaries. Should I carry on the plane my tapes. If so will the x-ray machine erase them with its magnet or what? How to I handle this? I have never had to fly to shoot somewhere. PLease help.

Dan, I travel all the time, take your tapes with you on the plane. The X-ray machines will not harm them. I have never had a problem in the last 7 years. Enjoy your trip.

Mark

Dan, don't know if you already went to DR. While I have never had a specific incident with xrays ruining tape, I do recall coming back from Haiti and Ecuador with a few tapes fogged. Maybe their machines produce a few more MAs or KVs. I'm sure some of our sponsors carry the lead lined film and tape bags.

Rand




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failure can not contend with persistence

Rand...

Was wondering if you had those tapes in your carry-on or if it was in your checked luggage? I don't think the hand-carry x-ray machines create much of an electromagnetic field, but I don't know about what happens to checked luggage.

Also, was that DV tape or Betacam? Ever since the days of Hi8 I noticed that it's harder to bulk erase the newer tapes with higher coercivity than it was to bulk erase VHS or Betacam.

Here's a good reason to shoot tapeless, duplicate the data, and send the hard drives via seperate routes! Maybe someday...

Dean, It was in our checked luggage. I don't know how well they maintain those machines in some 3rd world countries, I haven't had any other problems in 15 years. I'm in agreement with you on tapeless: it sure would consolidate and save money.

Best of luck on your shoot!

Rand




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failure can not contend with persisitence

Carry-on or checked in, all luggage in the US goes through X-ray now. It also gets sniffed and can be hand inspected.

Rand...

What kind of problems did the tape exhibit after getting zapped? I know what fogged film looks like but hadn't seen tape corrupted by airport scanners -- and hope I never have to.

Thanks.

checked luggage generally gets a much higher dose

also dont forget that in other countries there are different rules and machines

best bet is to use led lines bags or boxes just in case and have them hand inspected

but failing that i would always have them in carry on not checked

Dean, It had darkened transparent to gray transparent patches in the tape. I know that many shooters have traveled around the world with little if any problems, but it has happened. As we discussed earlier and Micheal reiterated, I think its a good idea to carry your film in a lead lined bag. It's also organized and provides added durability.

Rand




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failure can not contend with persisitence

Rand...

The scary part is that if it affects magnetic tape, then it'll affect hard drives, too.

Good to know about this. Thanks for the warnings.

I've looked into this as well, and generally you are much better off carrying the tapes in your carry-on bag. The xray dosage for checked baggage is much higher. I used to carry tapes in a lead-lined film bag with my carry-on bag, but several TSA people at busy airports told me that commercial news crews and others never use lead-lined pouches and instead just take their tape through with the carry-on items. If you go with a lead-lined pouch you will almost always trigger a hand inspection of the pouch, sometimes resulting in a re-xray of the tapes without the pouch.

Just a heads up guys.
Lead stops xrays, does nothing to magnetic fields i.e. it's quite useless putting tapes inside a lead lined packet!
Film is a different matter of course.
However if you're shooting with any digital format I can assure you it's almost impossible to erase the data apart from recording over it. There are bulk tape erasers that'll erase DV but they use an enormous magnetic field. The ones that'll erase BetaSP or VHS in one pass we've found even after 10 or more passes have zero effect on DV, DAT or DB tapes.

Dean, It had darkened transparent to gray transparent patches in the tape. I know that many shooters have traveled around the world with little if any problems, but it has happened. As we discussed earlier and Micheal reiterated, I think its a good idea to carry your film in a lead lined bag. It's also organized and provides added durability.

Rand




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failure can not contend with persisitence

That sounds more like mechanical trauma of some sort or perhaps a solvent got spilled on it or gave off vapours that attacked the binders holding the coating to the tape substrate - wan't in a suitcase where some cologne leaked by any chance was it? Magnetic tape simply isn't photosensitive as it would have to be to be affected by x-ray radiation. Very intense gamma or neutron radiation might cause the binders to depolymerize but you're talking whopper radiation levels there, more than enough to make anyone working with it unprotected to glow in the dark <grin>.

The discoloration would be a chemical change. I would not suspect x-rays. I would suspect a chemical agent such as someone's cologne or other liquid leaking through or an aerosol. Or the bin was depressurized and not heated with the contents getting near 0 deg F or lower.

Guys, this is getting fun. No cologne on this one. For the record, in the old days I was an aerospace engineer in radiation and yes, magnetic particle feilds. That said, there should be no abberation conected to Magnetic feilds involving x-rays. Dean has a concern about x-rays from airport radiation sources where he is traveling for a shoot. Truth told, most of us have never had any problems with our tape especially hand carried. I have experience with what x-radiated light does to film. (and yes even silver bromide can be affected by magnetism at a significant dose) but we're talking about tape. No problem here with tape or equipment: tape is subjected to unless super- electormagnetic. Dean, you will likely suffer no misfortune if you carry your tape, or even if you check it as most would seemingly agree. I answered you because I did have that experience which may yet remain a mystery, but coming back from a trip where I traveled through Ecuador and Haiti before arriving in Miami 2001 it looked like radiation fog to me. Have a good shoot, science and the rest of us wish you all the best. I love the interest and the knowledge a query generates.

Rand

Rand...

Actually I'm not too concerned about my tape getting affected by X-Rays, but rather that it was really strange how your tape somehow got zapped by a security scanner.

I figured X-Rays wouldn't affect it much, but am wondering if some other scanning technology might have been in place, such as an MRI or related equipment.

As Bob mentioned, it takes a very powerful magnetic field to affect high-coercivity tapes. I once tried to bulk erase a metal particle Hi8 tape and, while it killed the PCM sound track, the video track was still there. I would assume that DV tape is even more robust.

The biggest concern is the people handling the luggage behind the scenes.

There's a possibility that a luggage inspector messed with your tapes. Before 9/11 and the implementation of the TSA, I had a case locked with a pair of padlocks. When I got home, I discovered that an airline employee or ramp worker had jammed the locks with superglue. I reported that to the airline as well as the FBI -- may seem a bit paranoid, but I suggested that might be a disgruntled employee in a secure AOA. Just takes a little superglue in a static port of an airplane to knock out airspeed, altimiter and rate-of-climb instruments.

Also, just a month or so ago several TSA inspectors in Hawaii were indicted for stealing thousands of dollars of cash from luggage. Federal employess who are entrusted to keep us safe from terrorists are actually thieves?

Still nothing like being cautious and avoiding potential problems. If things get really desperate, then FedEx-ing duplicate hard drives back might be an option once things go tapeless.

By the way -- your camera's working ok, right? The problems your tape exhibited isn't due to a busted tape drive...? :-)

Is anybody travelling from London to the USA with a professional video camera these days? How are you solving the problem of potential loss of equipment and master tapes?
Any advice woule be appreciated
Cecilia