Mini DV tape for HD shooting, do I need "hd" tape?
 

When I saw B&H advertise in accessories for "HD mini DV tape", I assumed that you need this to shoot true HD. So I bought a box of it.

I later learned on this board from an unrelated thread that this is not so. That the triple/quaduple priced HD mini DV tapes only "supposedly" make for less drop outs, and that really 99% of time, standard mini DV tapes with accept/shoot/create... the HD video just as well. case closed for me.

But today in Circuit city store, a sales guy says , no you need HD mini DV tape to get true HD, and a 2nd sales guy there said, yeah, all the camera reps came in and gave a demonstration to this effect. So now I"m back to being a bit confused ont he issue again.

You can record HDV to any Mini DV tape. What you were told a Circuit City was bunk (probably why he was working there and not working as videographer).

However, when you get a dropout on HDV it tends to be greater in length than one in DV. Prevention of dropouts is why you'd want to use higher quality tapes such as ones labeled for HDV.

Try a search
 

It is always a good practice to try a search before posting a new question: this one has been discussed extensively in "The long black line" forum. See for example http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...hlight=hd+tape or http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...hlight=hd+tape.

Sales people live on commision (most of them) so it is their best interest to steer you toward more expensive stuff. Your interest, on the other hand, is to find out what the truth is - do your search on this forum, read reviews, read anything you can reach on the internet; then make your own decision.

I sometimes buy things from the local stores, but ONLY after doing extensive research on the product. Then go to the store and buy it, not paying any attention on what the part time high schooler sales aid might say... leave me alone, I've done my homework, I'm buying what I need, not what you have for sale!

It all comes down to the question "what is your video worth?"

If you don't care about the occasional drop-out or glitch, then the standard, inexpensive tapes are fine. However, if it's a paying shoot, say it's a job you're doing for somebody else, then you have to ask yourself if you can afford the risk presented by cheap tape.

As for me, the video I shoot has value, so I never consider anything but the best tape I can buy. I wouldn't shoot HDV on anything but an HD-branded cassette. Hope this helps,

good point Chris, if I was being paid by a client I might agree.
This project I'm doing is my on footage for my own website, still important, but I can probabaly pass on the $10 tapes and get the $3 tapes and put up with one glitch once a year.

But I would agree, that one glitch a year, on a client job, could bring massive grief from a prickly client.

Evin, thanks for the links, what is your opinion?

Also, issue of using different brands, I need to finish the expesive Sony tapes I bought, then want to go back to the cheaper regular Maxells, any worry there?

Hi Kevin,

the salesman were just trying to get you to buy more expensive tape, and he lied: you can just record HDV on a normal minidv tape.

If you switch brand, run a tape cleaner trough it.

IMO... if dropouts will be a problem for you, then you either need:
A- A second camera.
B- Insurance.

Simply getting more expensive tape won't cover your butt... you can still get dropouts or other things on the shoot can go wrong.

Chris is so right.

From personal experience, I've seen much more dropouts when shooting HDV on standard MiniDV tapes compared to when I shoot HDV using Sony Digital Master tape. The huge difference in price between standard miniDV tapes and the Sony Digital Master miniDV tapes is a reason to take pause, however, I've got hard evidence based on my own experience, the quality of tape makes a difference in terms of drop-out when it comes to recording HDV. The trade off is, would you rather save money on tape, with the increased risk of drop-outs? Or, spend more on the tape, and reduce the risk of drop-outs? This has been well convered in other threads, but the point bares repeating.

This thread comes up way to much here. What baffles me about the topic is this: Most if not all posters on this site seem to fall into two categories, professional video/filmmakers or serious amateurs. A high quality tape like the Sony PHDVM-63DM DVCAM Master Digital Cassette is $16 when bought in quantities of 10 or more at B+H. The cheapest Mini DV tape I could find on the site was $2.50 in quantities of 10. Ask yourself one of these questions and use the answer to pick your tapes:

1. If you are a professional, are your clients and/or your reputation and/or your time worth $13.50 to you?

2. If you are an amateur is your project or your time (if you had to reshoot or spend additional post time to fix) not worth $13.50?

3. If you're just shooting family memories are your child's first steps not worth $13.50 to you?

While I realize the cost of tape is magnified by the number of tapes isn't the importance of the project also magnified by the number of tapes you shoot?

Stop the madness people! Cheap tapes are like cheap condoms, they're great when they work.
--JL

Interesting guys. I have not shot enough with both mediums to compare, but on this forum I've seen very high end folks on both sides of this. Too bad there is not some website like consumer reports that have done the definitive unbiased controlled study.

Kevin, I would advice you to do a search on this topic on this forum. It has been covered lots of time, and maybe you'll gather more information and opinions in those threads.
Best regards,

Yes, I read all those threads thanks. The minute I think I've decided that it's not worth the money, other smart folks come on and say it is. so there is no consensus even among the smartest guys here.

My opinion
 

While I feel honored by someone asking for my opinion, Kevin, please keep in mind, this is just one opinion as you have already seen here.

My Z1 came with one Sony digital master tape and I used that. Also with the camera I had a rebate from Sony consisting of 10 digimaster tapes, two NPF-950 batteries, Vegas 6, and and instructional DVD for using the camera. The box with those ten tapes is still untouched! I am aware of the possibility of dropouts when using less expensive tapes, but as an engineer I also know: Mr. Murphy is right thinking that everything that can go bad, will eventually go bad, including expensive Sony tapes. I am using TDK tapes from Costco (not exclusively, that answers your other question) and never had a problem so far. I know, the day will come, and I too, will have a dropout.

I am not saying that the expensive Sony tapes are not better; yes they are better! I am saving them for that "all important" shot coming up some time in the future. But if I ever had a shot my life or carreer as a professional videographer (or serious hobbyist as someone put it above) depends on, I will not depend solely on the Sony tape: I will either attach a FireStore or a laptop and record BOTH onto the tape and to the hard drive.

Evrin:
are they better, a minority here claims they are from real world experience. I have not yet in any thread seen one link that established this once and for all.

Imagine how I feel about it. If only I had the time, I'd combine all of 'em into one big thread.

Thanks Josh for an excellent post. Everything you said there was golden. Much appreciated.

Brilliant. Couldn't have said it better. Thanks again,

Kevin, yes I do think the Sony HDV tapes are better, I mentioned that in my post. For me it's just a theoretical "belief" since I have not yet experienced a dropout with regular DV tapes, but there are a few people reporting on this forum that they actually have experienced a dropout. This in not something that will ever be "established once and for all" as you put it.

It's rather a determination you need to make for yourself. If you can afford to loose some footage because of a dropout (shot is not very important or you have a B-roll camera rolling) and money is an issue, then go for regular tape. But if you have to make sure you absolutely have that shot without a glitch, then do not hesitate to fork out the $ and go for the HDV tape!

I hope you do understand the difference between a dropout with DV footage and a dropout with HDV footage. With DV you loose one frame out of 30 per second, you will never even notice; but with long GOP mpeg2 encoding if you loose one frame, the whole half second is ruined because each frame depends on the adjacent frames in addidion to it's own data. And that, my friend, will be a major headache!

There is nothing more valuable than your own personal experience, so I suggest you use standard miniDV tape for HDV recording until the day you observe some drop-outs. Then decide for yourself if the insurance is worth it or not. It's a statistical game. It's about chances of drop out. You may be lucky. This might all be bunk. I'm sure someone somewhere has run a controlled study. I'd like to see it. My personal experience leads me to use the better tape for important shoots. For me, the cost of a reshoot far outweights any tape savings.

I was steered towards the Panasonic AYDVM63AMQ tapes, have yet to experience a dropout and pay $7.50 per. I see no reason to take a risk at that price.

I do however have a bookshelf full of "experiments" from my earlier days where I tried to cut corners, first with the legendary drilling-a-hole-in-the-VHS case to record SVHS, and later with some form of quasi-HI8 on regular 8mm tapes (can't even remember the theory behind that). In most cases, the resulting tapes are inferior to the true versions of the formats I was trying to approximate; in particular the 8mm tapes are full of dropouts. Of course times have marched on and tape manufacturing is a different animal than it was back then but still--

That's a decent thought except it doesn't address what happens if you use expensive tapes and still get dropouts. For the price difference between cheap tapes and expensive ones you could buy a Firestore drive and simultaneously record to both that and tape on most HDV cameras, giving a level of insurance you can't get from tape alone. So it's all about trade-offs of cost versus reliability and figuring out what works for you and your customers.

Personally I've seen zero difference in reliability between the most expensive Sony HDV tapes and cheap miniDV tapes from Sam's Club. I'm not experiencing any dropouts on cheap tapes in dozens of hours of HDV recording, and if I ever did get a dropout I'd just cut to another camera in editing - same as I did with DV. I'm happy, my customers are happy, and my profit margins are that much larger because I'm not wasting money on over-priced tapes.

The condom analogy is good for a laugh but doesn't really apply here unless you only shoot with one camera and don't have an HDD backup on it. That's like buying an expensive condom and then leaving it in your wallet.

P.S. I'd agree though that people should carefully consider and test their options in regards to tapes and not just assume cheap ones will work. Your mileage may vary...

Sony claims less drop-outs with Digital Master, not no drop-outs. May you never have the experiences I've had with HDV tape recording drop-outs. I'd like to see hard evidence on the real differences too, but there are so many factors and recording the data and controlling the experiment is complicated. In any event, in a perfect world I wish I could avoid HDV tape completely and record to solid state storage. But there are so many logistical reasons to record to tape at the moment.

No single recording solution is infallible: I've heard of people having glitches using P2 cards and those cost over $50 per minute of recording time. Redundancy is the real security, not infallibility.

Well said. I fully agree with you that this is the best possible way to go -- you get the immediacy of edit-ready files; completely by-passing the capture process; plus a confidence back-up on tape which is also your instant archive copy.

Testing, testing...
 

A few people mentioned "hard evidence" in this thread.

Although there are differences, in the end tape serves the same purpose as CDs and DVDs - storing ones and zeros... so I am thinking... did any company come up yet with a way of testing tapes? If a clearly consumer-oriented inexpensive CD/DVD burning program like Nero can have a disk tester included in the toolkit, is there a way to do it with tape? Maybe a DTR with the proper driver program? I don't remember coming across anything like that.

Ervin:
I don't this is valid that this will never be established. If Sony and others are charging quadruple they should have a white paper on it then -- since consumer reports does not seem to want to do the test -- of course that would be better an independent test.
thanks David, I'll go with what you say.

Kevin: were you one who said in past thread the the expensive tapes were like Monster Cables? that a good analogy (if it's true)

Don't think recording to a hardrive would work for me as I"m handholding a small camera.

I bought a 5 pack of the master HDV tapes... was $50 for 5? either way... I went through those in a day, didn't notice any dropouts... then I bought 50 "premium" tapes for $105 shipped... and... no dropouts... I've gone through about 30 of them so far.

So meh... I'll stick w/ the premiums for now... :)

And I'm not in a "safe" enviroment... I'm filming paintball, I've had tapes drop in the dirt/grass and get shot at (while in the plastic case in my pocket). Zero. Dropouts.

Right now my HDR-FX7 is at sony getting a new LCD hinge (possibly a new LCD) and maybe a new microphone cover... It got shot a few times ;) I still need to clean my lens hood.

<argument tone = "Playful">

I don't think the Monster Cable analogy applies in this situation. There is a real difference between standard miniDV tape and Digital Master tape (though I would agree the price premium is out of line), and there is a measurable difference in terms of drop-outs (I would be willing to bet one could measure it) on the other hand, Monster Cable is a total rip off, I have challenged Monster Cable sales people to a bet based on a double blind study and no one has been willing to put up any money. It's well established among audio engineers that standard cable is every bit as good. On the other hand, the standard tape vs. Digital Master debate is not so clear cut. While you'll find people who have observed a difference in terms of drop outs, I'm sure there is no one out there who has heard the difference between quality cable and Monster Cables, and if they have, their belief would in fact fall apart in a double-blind study. The standard tape vs. Digital Master tape study would not be as clear-cut. And unlike Monster Cable, Sony is giving you a choice of four grades of MiniDV tape: Premium, Excellence, High Definition, and Digital Master. Monster Cable offers one: expensive rip-off in fancy packaging. They have also bullied retailers to push generic cable off their shelves. Sony has not done the same with their tape, they offer consumers a choice, and in fact, you have to go out of your way yo buy the Digital Master. Thus, I would argue the Monster Cable analogy does not really apply.

</argument>

I worked recording with magnetic tape for 46years. Keeping the tape heads clean minimizes dropouts.

It's interesting, the consumer DV tape manufacturers have recently gone from recommending the heads be cleaned when you see the dirty head message, dropouts or every 25hours to... 'clean the video heads frequently'

Don't rewind a cleaning tape to use it again, it's not worth risking coating the heads and guides with any collected residue, dust or dirt.

This may sound like a stupid question but I need to know because me and a buddy of mine have been arguing about it for a while. Question - does it make a big difference quality wise using a sony hdv tape? Ive been using costco tdk tapes on my fx-1 and notice no dropouts but I was wondering If you get higher quality images from the sony hdv tapes. Mahalo

If you don't have any dropouts, the quality is the same. It's 1s and 0s. You could test by recording the same material to two different tapes, and then using a difference composite mode to check the difference.

Choice of tape does NOT affect image quality. It affects only your chances for dropouts or glitches.

Many folk use new good grade SD DV tape without problems; always stay well away from brands like 'Silver DV Tape' in 5 packs or similar.

During manufacture, higher priced magnetic tape is quality checked much more often than the lower grades. The whole process is slower because the cutting knives are changed more frequently keeping the finer tape edges.

If the knives start to get blunt, they can easily get out of skew and this can result in a trapezoid cut.

If you lay that whole tape on one edge, straight out on a dead flat surface, it'll rise up slightly, then down, along its length.

It has no chance of tracking dead straight through a cams tape path. They test a few, if they don't actually jam, they go out to the cheaper stores.

Keep an eye on the intro of hard disk cams, as consumer DV tape cams sales fall below a certain point, IMO the major tape manufacturers will offload their tape manufacturing plants to smaller (read cheaper) companies.

Their output quality will fall as they strive to save costs. IMO it'll go quickly like a domino effect. Jump in and stock up with your favourite tape first.

Im sorry but how would I go about using a difference composite mode? I use adobe premiere CS3 as my NLE.

Mahalo

No, but that's a useful comparison. For almost any kind of standard consumer connection cable you can pay anywhere from a few dollars to well over $100, and the $100 cables aren't ten times better than the $10 ones. If you really want top quality buy the HDV tapes, if you want to save a few bucks try the same tapes you've been using for DV and see how that works for you - then you can share tapes with your DV cameras (if you still have any).

From Sony's press release of 5/17/05

"Professional Media Optimized for HDV Applications

Sony’s highest-quality 6mm videotape, DigitalMaster, is the recommended professional media for HDV applications. These 63-minute cassettes (model PHDVM63DM) use Sony’s AME (Advanced Metal Evaporated) II Technology and its unique dual-active magnetic layers.

By improving on an already successful product, the new AME II manufacturing process employs Hyper Evaticle IV magnetic grains, improved lubricants, and a refined Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) layer. DigitalMaster tape exhibits greater packing density of magnetic grains, higher retentivity, higher output and lower noise. The result is a more robust tape with 60 percent fewer dropouts and 90 percent fewer errors."

60% fewer dropouts compared with? Note they don't say specifically. Assume they mean compared their less expensive tapes. What's the dropout rate for those less-expensive tapes for reasons due to the tape alone? Who knows, but if it's 1 significant dropout event in 100 tapes . . .

If Sony would just tell what the dropout rate was on their SD tapes(presumably they know what it is) one would have some chance of evaluating their claim.

Note too that the dropout rate is distinguished from "errors", what ever those may be.

On a side note, Sony has recently been charged with price- fixing on professional video tape by the European Union.

The DV and HDV formats implement error correction. If there are too many errors for the error correction algorithm to fix, then you get a dropout.

That might be the difference between error rate and dropout rate.

They could be referring to something else... heck, they could be referring to DVCPRO tape (metal particle, not metal evaporated).

2- Things like dust getting into the tape will cause dropouts. You can test for this by blowing dust into the tape (you have to open it up).

Other things like hard shock will cause dropouts... in some sports situations that can be a problem I think.

And of course there are a number of other things that can go wrong (e.g. cell phones + audio equipment). Tapes getting lost in transport. User error from not labeling the tape. VTR eating your tape. Consistently bad weather or background noise. Etc.

Glenn,
are you telling that this can cause dropout...??

I do know that 2-way law enforcement radios cause a disturbance in video signals. I used to be a Deputy Conservation Officer and at that time used an XL-1s. If I was shooting near the vehicle and a transmission came across the radio it would not actually cause a drop out, but it would cause the picture to shift and distort. Also if one was near the vehicle and powered the XL-1s up it would cause the radio to emit a low crackling popping nose. A cell phone can cause distortion, etc. on a computer monitor under the right conditions so they may effect video also.