Have I been wasting money on HDV tapes?

K

Kellen Dengler

Member
I went on a shoot yesterday and used my usual Panasonic HD Mini DV tapes with my A1. One of the other videographers was using a Sony HDV cam and he was shooting on regular DV tapes. He said he has never used HD Mini DV tapes and always just uses the regular SD Mini DV tapes and still gets HDV quality video.

Does anyone else do this? I thought you HAD to use HD specific mini DV tapes? Now I'm kind of thinking I've wasted a ton of money on HDV tapes...
 
From what I herd, the HDV tapes are less likely to have dropouts.
I would only use them I was shooting something really important or if I was getting paid to do a job.
 
I agree with milvid.

I know you definitely don't HAVE to use HD tapes, and I think the only difference may be less drop outs.
 
Kellen,
I usually use a regular Sony miniDV tape and is very rare to find drop-outs on them... I have a Z1 by a year and I've never notice a drop-out on it... I think that the only think that is important is to use the same brand of the tape to avoid diferent (tape) lubrificants...

Cheers,
Gabriel Lehto
 
Yeah, HDV and MiniDV tapes are identical, they just slap on a different logo and charge more for it because "it's HD".... when in the end they're identical datarates and identical tape types.
 
I used to say the same thing.

Then I logged 19 hours of footage on Fujifilm tapes and have had playback problems.

It usually doesn't skip in the same place twice, but after playing it back on two different A1's there is bound to be a skip while I'm trying to capture.

Then I tried some footage on the supplied Canon HDV tape and didn't have a single dropout. Hrm.
 
The signal records at equal quality to all tapes - such is the essence of digital - but the quality of the tapes themselves can and does vary radically between brands and grades.

There's a reason for the price difference between a $4MP MiniDV tape and a $20ME DVCAM tape of the same size & capacity.

- Mikko
 
DV and HDV share the same bandwidth = same data size on the tape.
So the choice is not HDV or DV tape, but consumer to professional tape (less dropouts)
I suggest the professional tape Sony DVCAM PDVM series, which is used on most TV broadcast networks
 
I definitely suggest avoiding the standard tapes. While the basic panasonics, sony, fujifilm, JVC miniDV tapes are by no means bad, they are not designed for our kind.

I only had regular Panasonic tapes once for my A1, and capturing to my computer was terrible. The extra price for the pro grade tapes is definitely worth the money.
 
mikkowilson said:
The signal records at equal quality to all tapes - such is the essence of digital - but the quality of the tapes themselves can and does vary radically between brands and grades.

There's a reason for the price difference between a $4MP MiniDV tape and a $20ME DVCAM tape of the same size & capacity.

- Mikko
Click to expand...


Yes, about 8 times bigger box... I do not belive the tape is much diffrent.

We are using standard Panasonic DVM63PQ with our cameras, no problems.
 
I have been using regular TDK for over a year and i noticed a drop/sketchy drop during capture about 2times. Thats all i have been able to see.

If i decided to switch, what do i need to do for adaptation? clean the heads then adapt to new tapes?
 
someday said:
DV and HDV share the same bandwidth = same data size on the tape.
So the choice is not HDV or DV tape, but consumer to professional tape (less dropouts)
I suggest the professional tape Sony DVCAM PDVM series, which is used on most TV broadcast networks
Click to expand...

While the data rate is the same, due to the HDV codec a dropout is far more catastrophic on those cams.

For personal stuff a lower grade tape should be fine, but for paying gigs I would suggest getting the best grade of tape available. No sense saving a few bucks only to end up spending more by having to reshoot something and/or losing a client.
 
rollinfive0w said:
what do you mean by dropout, like a missing frame??
Click to expand...
on DV a dropout may only partly effect 1 frame, but with the HDV codec a dropout usually results in the loss of at least 15 frames, due to the GOP codec.

Dv compresses each frame individually, but HDV compresses a group of 15 frames together, so a corruption in 1 usually causes the whole group to be lost.
 
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