From: Flick Harrison (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Jun 28 2008 - 12:30:37 PDT
I doubt you will get image bleed with digital tapes. The data is
recorded sequentially in byte packages so if there's a bit or two
here and there in a long package of data that doesn't get flipped 1 /
0 properly, you're not going to see "bleedthrough" like on analog
tape. You'll just get noise or dropouts. That's why head alignment
is equally all or nothing; either you are reading the narrow data
stream at 25MBps or you're not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV#Video_compression
Never heard the warning about cameras, i imagine if the magnetic
particles get overworked they could fly off into the machine, leaving
magnetic debris that could futz up future recording. If it's true, I
imagine it would apply to re-playing tapes just as much as re-
recording, since neither causes more physical stress on the tape;
record head just uses magnetic switching, not physical contact with
each particle.
Unfortunately, also, I think digital doesn't break down as
interestingly as analog. You'll get sections of blank (blue screen)
on the tape whenever there's a problem. If digital doesn't get what
it wants, it simply refuses to do anything. One or zero, baby.
Digital doesn't do fuzzy.
I've messed around with bulk erasers on VHS tape. You get half-
images, lots of wonky stuff. But doing the same on DV tapes kind of
ruins them - alternate perfect image with blue screen, noisy images,
sound glitches. I guess that's interesting in its way too, but it
lacks the nuance and sine-waves of degradation that make analog so
beautiful to destroy.
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On 27-Jun-08, at 9:53 AM, Ryan Marino wrote:
> I'm curious to severity of multiple uses of a mini dv tape. I know
> this is not something generally recommend for poor image quality/
> drop outs but this is what I am looking to see. When I say re-using
> a tape I'm talking somewhere around 20 times. I want to push the
> tape as far as it will go before breaking.
>
> I've read about drop out and image bleeding (both which interest
> me) is it safe to say this would happen after something like 20
> uses? I've also read that multiple uses of a tape is not good for
> the heads of a camera, could this damage a camera permanently?
>
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