Re-record tapes - Ok or not?

From my experience, TDK tapes seem to have more dropouts when I record over them a second time, and I havent had any bad experiences with Panny tapes, but I figured if TDK gave me drop outs, I might as well stay safe and buy new tapes. Sony tapes have sometimes given me problems when recording multiple times, but I have never recorded over a tape more than once.
Just my experiences.....
 
Thanks KevinPeeples for sharing. It's good that we can share views & experiences. So far I've had absolutely no problem with Panny tapes, even though the specific tape model I'm using is not a master tape, but it still gives good footage.
 
Andy,

not sure what it's like where you are, but as far as I know, in the US it's considered very bad form to use a pre-shot tape for a client. for yourself, if you want to risk it, sure, but when someone is paying you money to work, you should really be giving them fresh tape.

andybiz_2005 said:
Well, for me, I just completed a 2-day corporate shoot with my DVX. Just prior to this important shoot, I got my DVX's recording thoroughly cleaned at my local Panny Service Center. Over the two days, I shot a lot of footage comprising of 12 tapes in total. 3/4 of the 12 tapes used where already reused, or re-shot on 3 times before.

So far, when I reviewed the footage from the tapes, there were no reported drop-outs. The images looked just as clear as when using a completely new miniDV tape.
Click to expand...
 
I will second that. My policy is really quite simple. Whenever you're on a client shoot, only use new tapes. For me that would only be MQ's. If you're just wanting stock footage, archive, testing, etc... then use your older tapes.Years ago, it wasn't a very good policy to reuse VHS tapes, or even S tapes because they were analog. With digital tapes, it really is a different story. For myself, I've used previously recorded tapes for the above mentioned reasons and have never had a problem.

I contribute that to the fact that I only use one brand of tape. Always!!!! I've never had a head clog on digital since using the MQ tapes by Panasonic.
 
it's ok to re-record over a mini dv tape a couple of times but then you need to stop because it happened to me. i re-recorded over a tape about 2 times and the third time i was filming a great movie and then when importing it started to screw up so yeah it would be best if you only re-recorded over it once
 
The only thing I would add to this thread is that just remember, for the most part, things that you read on this subject are subjective. There really are no absolute experts. Over the years, I've talked about this subject with some of the top tape so-called experts, and you know what? None of them have an absolute answer as to how many times you can record, or re-record over a digital tape.

As an example, when Sony first came out with the VX1000, one of their great sales pitches at NAB that year was that they had re-recorded the same tape for 5,000 times without any dropout or glitches. Now how true is that??? Who knows, I"m certainly not going to ruin 4 sets of heads just to prove it.

I will stick to my original statement. For safety purposes and just plain common sense, tape is the cheapest part of your entire production. Use only new tapes for client paid services. As for the use, and re-use of pre-recorded tapes, that's up to you.
 
100% No...NOPE NOPE NOPE...

It is not ok to rerecord over minidv tapes, or any dv tapes for that matter. The information is recorded digitally. When you rerecord over them, you can notice artifacts, and dropped frames when capturing on future rerecords. Glitchy bars and distorted audio tend to appear no matter how good a camera or tape you are using, it will happen if you rerecord

::: Connor
 
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