Mini DV playback questions

S

streetlightprods

Member
Three questions for you guys/girls.

1. Does playing back the mini dv tapes in the camera put any wear and tear on the tapes?

2. During shoots, I'll play back the footage for the director, whoever, and then I'll press "End Search" to get to the last frame. When I do this and then bring it in through Final Cut, it becomes a huge hassle either telling me about dropped frames, making it's OWN in and out points, and sometimes just not capturing certain pieces. Is there a way around this during playback?

3. I've heard about the different lubricants of different brand mini dv tapes putting extra wear and tear on the headers, but how much wear and tear? Can it really damage the camera or the footage?

Thanks a bunch all.
 
I'm sure you'll get a lot more technical responses, so I'll try to answer
as a shooter, and someone who's been using Mini DV tapes for years.

Decent quality tapes should not be affected (i.e dropouts), from
playing them in the camera (or deck). I use Panasonic PQ tapes, which
haven't let me down yet. I'd highly recommend them.

http://tinyurl.com/25c9dh

There's a lot of debate on the "wear and tear" on the camera when
used for playback, or as a deck. Some religiously never use the camera
for playback, just recording. I personally believe that unless your fast
forwarding or rewinding hundreds of tapes, the wear is minimal.

That being said, any cheap MiniDV camera will work great as a
deck, and you never have to worry about wear on your DVX.

http://tinyurl.com/yj7m53j

Finally, some shooters only use one brand of tape in their camera.
The reasoning being that different tapes use different lubricants which
can affect your camera. Though I use PQ tapes 90 percent of the time,
I can tell you that I've never had a problem when I had to purchase
that emergency Fuji Mini DV tape from the gas station when I ran out.

I hope this is helpful.

Peter
 
Very cool. I try to clean it every so often to keep the headers good and ready to roll.

A cheap camera as a tape deck? I heard that before, but wasn't able to get into it with the person. I'm assuming that all the aspects recorded onto a specific tape from a camera will be on that camera and that's that. From there, any other camera would simply be used as a "medium" (and not downgrade in quality even though the camera, used as the tape deck, is a lower quality camera) from that point on, right? However, that wouldn't be the case with, say, an HD mini DV being brought into a standard def camera, right? I guess what I'm asking is, if something is recorded in SD, then can any SD or HD camera can be used as a tape deck without reduction in quality? And if something is recorded in HD, then is it only an HD camera that can be used as a tape deck?
 
streetlightprods said:
Very cool. I try to clean it every so often to keep the headers good and ready to roll.
Click to expand...

Be careful how you clean and how often you do it. If you are using a cleaning cassette, you're really just doing more damage to your heads over time. Cleaning tapes are like dragging sand paper across the heads. Use them maybe once a year, and even then only if necessary. Also be sure to use them in PLAY mode only, and only for 5 seconds. Never, ever, ever rewind a cleaning cassette when you hit the end. Throw it away. Rewinding scrapes the heads badly, and can redeposit contaminants and even grind them into the grooves on the heads.

The thing about lubricants is really a matter of Sony vs. everyone else. Sony uses a wet-type, everyone else uses dry-type. So it's really down to using only Sony, or never Sony.

And as for using any other camera as a playback deck:

Once it's on the tape, it's all 1s and 0s. And any SD footage on miniDV from any camera can play back in any other DV or HDV player, since HDV cameras are all backwards-compatible. HDV footage, however, can only be played back in HDV players as SD players can't read that data stream.
 
Just backing up what C2V said:

- Any MiniDV camera will play any Mini DV tape
with no loss in quality.

- Use cleaning tapes sparingly. I do it once every 6 months
for 10-seconds, or when you see "banding" on the recording.
 
Me Myself & I said:
Any MiniDV camera will play any Mini DV tape
with no loss in quality.
Click to expand...
Did you mean: "Any DV camcorder that records onto MiniDV cassettes will play DV recording from another MiniDV cassette"? Because MiniDV is not a recording format, it is a media format. Recording formats that are generally used with MiniDV cassettes are DV, DVCAM and HDV.
 
Cranky said:
Did you mean: "Any DV camcorder that records onto MiniDV cassettes will play DV recording from another MiniDV cassette"? Because MiniDV is not a recording format, it is a media format. Recording formats that are generally used with MiniDV cassettes are DV, DVCAM and HDV.
Click to expand...

In fairness, miniDV commonly refers to the small cassette for the DV format. If it were DVCAM, it would generally be labeled as such. Same with HDV.
 
C2V said:
In fairness, miniDV commonly refers to the small cassette for the DV format. If it were DVCAM, it would generally be labeled as such. Same with HDV.
Click to expand...

From http://www.hdv-info.org/page2.htm

"Tokyo, Japan, September 30, 2003 - Canon Inc., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) today announced that the specifications which realize the recording and playback of high-definition video on a DV cassette tape have been established as the “HDV” format."

There are four DV cassette sizes: small, medium, large and XL. Medium and extra large are used by Panasonic only. The Sony S270 can record HDV onto a large cassette, delivering 4.5 hours of uninterrupted video.
 
Bottom line: if it was recorded with a Mini-DV camcorder, it can be played back on any Mini-DV camcorder, tangential issues notwithstanding.
 
streetlightprods said:
Hey. Thanks a lot guys. I really appreciate the info. Any advice as far as question 2? Any editors on board?
Click to expand...

In-camera playback isn't recommended, mostly because of the issues that you're talking about which all stem from time code breaks.

To avoid breaks, start your tape with your time code set to FIRST REC: PRESET. This allows you to begin the tape at a user-set time code. Once you stop to review a shot, or to power down the camera, or generally after the first couple shots just for safety, go in and set you TC from PRESET to REGEN.

In PRESET, the camera will always start recording with the last TC value it has stored in its memory. This isn't a problem if you're shooting straight through, since it will always pick up where it left off. But if you aren't cued back to the exact frame, the camera will still start from the TC value in its memory. In REGEN, it will pick up with the TC that's on the tape where it starts recording.

Also, be sure to shoot with proper heads and tails. Start recording at least 5 seconds before you call "action," and don't stop until at least 5 seconds after "cut." This gives you plenty of space for FCP to capture the clips, even if there's a TC break... assuming that you've properly logged your clips and are using Batch Capture.
 
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