Does tape quality matter?

M

mr_goodbomb

Active member
Usually, I buy a tape or a pack when I need them, or more likely, get them from my school. However, I'm shooting a feature and I want to have everything ready. I'm buying my tapes now. The film is done in segments, so I can use different cameras for each. Mainly, it's a DVX100, an XL-2, and a couple of HDDV cameras.

Does the brand or quality of tape matter as to the finished product, or will the everyday JVC tapes do just fine?
 
It really won't make that big of a difference.
However what you need to do is stick with one tape and don't buy any other brands.
Some brands are dry lubricated, and some (like Sony tapes) are wet lubricated.
Its not a big deal switching between dry tapes, as long as you dont switch from dry to wet or vice versa. The quality of the recordings on your tape will not vary as to which tape you use.

And if you'd like my opinion:
I dislike JVC tapes alot. I use to use them because they were the cheapest. All i've noticed from them is that they will randomly dirty up your heads much faster than other tapes. I use Panasonics and so far i havent seen a problem with them. And remember this is just my opinion. Some people may say they love JVC tapes. I just don't.

Hope this helped.
-Jake
 
I've had a couple of problems using the regular Sony DV tapes in Sony HDV cameras with the occasional few dropped frames. The whole screen goes red for a couple of frames. I did a wedding recently and it happened once on two out of eight tapes. Perhaps it wouldn't have happened had I been using the more expensive 'HDV' tapes.
 
We are pretty much always using Panasonics, and they really have worked just fine for our dvx100b. used a couple others, and aside from a really cheap set, i've seen no huge notable difference, but we like to be consistent...
 
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