Should you ffwd then rewind a new tape?

S

schmedel

Member
I remember back in the old days we used to fast forward then rewind our Beta cam tapes (not sure but I think they called it striping) so that the tape would align properly with the heads. Does it matter with the DVX? I'm worried that this may shorten the life of the mechanism.
 
I should have said

FFWD to the END, then rewind the tape to the beginning. I just wanted to extend out the life of my DVX, but this is probably a mute point, they seem to be really durable cameras.
 
I used to do that all the time with audio DAT tapes because there seemed to be some evidence that this would in some way "shake off" bad particles on the tape, or pre-stretch prone portions of the tape, either of which could result in dropouts - and a ruined take.
It could have been random chance - but I did get a few dropouts on tapes I did NOT do this to. And almost zero cases of dropouts when I DID do this.
A miniDV drive is very similar to a DAT tape drive, so maybe there is something to this.
Hopefully someone with some direct knowledge can weigh in here.
 
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