A1 Tapes

[Eric Weiss]

What tape stock do you guys use for the A1?

I've always been partial to Sony Premium and Excellence.
I've never experienced any drop out on these tapes when shooting with
my old cams.

The new Sony DVM63HD is $9.45 per tape.
Is it really worth it?

[Even Solberg]

That's the one I use. No problems at all with it, so I recommend it.

[Kevin Amundson]

I havn't had any trouble with the Sony DVM63HD tapes yet.

[Eric Weiss]

so the hdv tapes are the general concenus?
anyone try shooting with just standard miniDV tapes?

[Bill Pryor]

I'm using Panasonic AMQ tapes. The guy at Zotz Digital recommended them to me. He's sold lots of XL H1 cameras, many to wildlife type people, and says everybody's having good luck with them. I haven't had any problem at all. They're just under 9 bucks each.

[Eric Weiss]

yes, those are great. i have a jvc gy-dv500u that uses them.
i bought it used and they were using pan tapes. i strongly believe you have to stick with one brand per machine. however, i get them for $7 each at TapeOnline

[Bill Pryor]

I just noticed that B&H's price is now $6.89. I paid just under $9 for a case a few months ago. One thing about tape, as useage increases the price always drops.

[Gert Kracht]

I'm amazed by the price of the Sony tapes.
Overhere we pay 15.95 Euro's per tape (more than 21 DOLLARS per tape!)
And if we buy them in 5 Pack the price drops to 12 Euro's per tape.

The tapes are very good. Had no dropouts. But the price had me searching for cheaper tapes. I found a company who's selling JVC tapes. They go at a price of 7.40 Euro's.

At first I got five of those JVC tapes and did some test shootings in the field.
Captured the video afterwards. No problem at all. Looks like I found me a good replacement for times I experiment with the camera. Which I do a lot.

I'm very curious about reason behind the huge price differences....

Anyway....back to the question:

HQ work: Sony tape
HQ hobby: JVC tape
DV work: Sony premium or better

[Gert Kracht]

Oh, I forgot to mention the type of the JVC tape:

DV63ME-Pro HD

[Don Palomaki]

I'm very curious about reason behind the huge price differences....

Brand name recognition is a significant contribution factor among tapes of otherwise similar performance characteristics. From what I've seen, Sony branded tape has always commanded a premium price. They can do it in part due to customer loyalty.

And most folks have pretty high brand loyalty. After all, tape, even premium tape, is the lowest cost part part of the video production process. Once they start with a tape that works for they they are very reluctant to make a change. {Kind of like getting a baseball player to change his pre-game ritual while on a winning streak <g>.}

[Deke Ryland]

I've been using the Panasonic PQ tapes for the past year with great luck (no dropouts or problems to speak of).

I think they are 2.99 a tape. I guess if you are scared of dropouts you can spend more... but to me, the PQ tapes are more than plenty. I can't imagine ever upgrading to the MQ tapes. If I ain't having problems with the PQ's... I'm not changing.

[Gert Kracht]

I have been using many different tapes from 1979 until now. The pictures, filmed in black and white, were recorded on Panasonic tapes. Later on, I almost constantly used Sony Pro tapes. And many of our old customers also did.
Those tapes are still here and are in pretty good condition too. But, loosing some signal from an analog tape has not that much impact when you had the same thing with digital tapes. Afterall loosing a part of your DV or HDV stream means no picture at all.

So, i can only hope that the Sony tapes are as good as the tapes I used in the past. Next to that I think I'm going to invest in a good optical drive (like Blue Ray Disk) to backup the tape data. Or simply buy a huge USB harddrive.

About the price of the tapes: I can imagine Sony wants to keep up the good quality of the tapes, but having a price difference of more than 200% seems to me like someone is getting more money than deserved.

[Don Palomaki]

A numbr of years ago (in the very early 1990s whane analog still ruled), one of the pro video mags ran several reports on analog tape tests. They were very detailed with numbers even on drop outs, signallevel, frequency response, etc. Wonder if anyone has done that recently on tape produced for the digital market, especially HDV?

[Gert Kracht]

Now that would be a test to look forward to !!!