For the love of god...Please don't reuse tapes

blackdogs377

Well-known member
Unless you want a big headache after you realize that 50% of the footage drops out and the other half didn't get recorded at all. This is what happened yesterday after we ran out of tapes and I had to use an old one, and we were shooting different scenes for a TV pilot we're doing, and after 4 hours, we went to dump the footage onto the computer and there was nothing there but the old stuff that we wanted to tape over. How terrible is that? And this was a panasonic pro-grade tape

We have to do a reshoot of all the stuff on monday :(

So just a warning to people who want to reuse tapes...think about it hard before doing it.
 
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aw. so sorry to hear about that.. but yeah its true. I had the same thing happen to me on a shoot. nothing 4 hours worth... but losing footage all around stinks.. Unfortunately thats why I have about 50 something used panasonic dv tapes lying around... and ive only had my dvx a few months.. sorry mate...
 
Really? A while ago, I used to record over tapes on my old VX2000 before I got my 100B. It never seemed to be much of an issue, with the occasional dropped frame or two but that's it. Maybe the sony tapes are more durable than the panny ones.
 
I reuse tapes once with no issues at all. After 1 reuse, it's a crapshoot. Great for test footage that only you see. I'd never reuse for a client.
 
I've re-used tapes a lot of times, even with HDV, and rarely have a problem (except for my 80 minute tape that I've re-used about ten times now). How old was this tape that you re-used?
 
I use the same tape over and over on my HV20 with an occasional dropped frame or two (not much really).
 
I had one tape I have used over 100 times for some test and still no dropped frames
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when you are recording/filmming does anything apear to be weird in the lcd?
so do you only notice it after word? (when capturing?)

I remember having frame drops sometimes but it would always look add when filming so I would know I haven't got the shot right. (never reused tapes on the DVX tho)
 
i had that problem the other day but i just rewound the tape and tried again and it worked fine.
 
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