I know you will all yell at me but...

yzmotoxer807

yzmotoxer807

Well-known member
I had to mix tapes the last wedding that I shot out of pure necessity. Two blank tapes that I had previously purchased (Panasonic AMQ because thats what I usually use) were somehow left at the church. Come reception time, I needed two tapes. All that I had available were two Sony (wet lubricant) tapes that my partner uses in his cam. So now I need to know if this will do much of anything bad and if so, what are the proper steps to fix it. Also, I have two types of head cleaners (a panasonic and a tdk) but I dont know if using one is the proper course of action. Just out of curiosity, I have heard that just running a blank tape of the normal kind that you use, in play mode for an hour will clean the heads. Is this true?
 
No one's going to yell at you. (And if they do, they should be banned from the forums...)

You will know if you have problems when you try to watch the footage back in the camera, or if it's messed up on playback on your edit deck. At this point, what's done is done and it might be time for a cleaning from your local authorized service center. If anything, that might be a good preemptive strike. Using either cleaning cassette can cause more harm than good.

The blank tape trick works for playhead clutter, but not in the case of mixed lubes.
 
Thanks for your quick response! And by the way, I know about the yelling. :) Its just that I know not to do what I did and it is such a common thing that is done wrong.

As far as your answer: I basically just need to hope that I did not do enough to harm anything? And if so then there is no other fix for the mixed lube problem than to get it cleaned by the pros?
 
yzmotoxer807 said:
As far as your answer: I basically just need to hope that I did not do enough to harm anything? And if so then there is no other fix for the mixed lube problem than to get it cleaned by the pros?
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Well, there's no way to know without watching playback, but again, a preemptive strike is probably in order. There's always this:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=6888

But a professional cleaning can't be beat.
 
on the topic of tapes, i'm new to dv...i was shooting on a hard drive cam...just got my dvx, what kind of tapes do you recommend? Obviously made only by Panasonic, but is there any name or a specific type I should look for? sorry for being so generic, I'm more of a hard drive kind of guy haha
 
WAB11463 said:
on the topic of tapes, i'm new to dv...i was shooting on a hard drive cam...just got my dvx, what kind of tapes do you recommend? Obviously made only by Panasonic, but is there any name or a specific type I should look for? sorry for being so generic, I'm more of a hard drive kind of guy haha
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A lot of folks around here are Panasonic tape fans. I use Fuji. Just depends on who you ask.

http://www.tapeonline.com/MiniDV/Panasonic_DVM63AMQ.aspx

http://www.tapeonline.com/MiniDV/Fujifilm_DVC-60.aspx
 
I really have a hard time believing that just two tapes could ever cause problems. I mean these cameras are kind of made to use dv tapes and all. Running 50 tapes 'might' bring about an issue but two? Don't worry about it.

"helpful tips" and "little things to think about" get a little blown out of proportion here.

I even captured a few scenes using my dvx once. Oh the horror. :D
 
I wouldn't worry about "damage", it is obviously not a good idea to mix wet and dry lube tapes, but i don't think you did any damage to the heads.

I use Sony premiums and had never had any problems.
 
pronghornproductions said:
I wouldn't worry about "damage", it is obviously not a good idea to mix wet and dry lube tapes, but i don't think you did any damage to the heads.

I use Sony premiums and had never had any problems.
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Looking back through the thread, the word "damage" was never used. And no, mixing lube types won't do damage to the heads themselves... potentially to footage on the tape, but not to the heads.

Again, trying not to "blow things out of proportion here," there's no way to know if the footage was compromised or if the heads got dirty/clogged until trying to play the footage back. If you don't encounter issues, don't worry about it. If you're still worried about it, a regular cleaning (6 months at the least) is good maintenance no matter what tapes you use.
 
I've mixed every type of tape you could think of in a DVX100a for over five years now, and never had ANYTHING go wrong with the camera besides routine cleaning/maintenance.

Do I recommend it? NO, but I do think the theory of "mixing tapes leads to breaking your camera" a bit over-exaggerated.
 
I understand that it will not "break" the camera but I was just wondering if it was bad for it.

The main reason that I asked the question was because I have an old Sony TRV900 that jams and eats tapes. Now, this year of this model of camera is known to have issues with this. It is a design flaw where the path that the tape travels through was not manufactured to a tight enough tolerance and so the tape can sometimes jam. The design alone will not cause the jamming. But it is known that mixing tape lubes in this camera is what helps to cause the jamming because the combination of the design flaw and the "gunk" buildup on the rollers and tape path catches the edge of the tape causing the jam. Interestingly, the Sony approved fix for the tape becoming jammed is to give the side of the camera a good smack to jar the drive enough to let go of the tape! But I digress...

The main reason that I asked this question because I was wondering if there was, like CV2 said, a "preemptive strike" against any problems like with the TRV900.
 
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