Tape STINKS!

[Jerry Jones]

Spent part of the day shooting MiniDV.

Got home.

Tape errors.

Old tapes.

Have to buy new ones now.

TAPE IS LAME.



I'm down to just two cheapo single-chip DV camcorders and these are absolutely the last tape cameras I'll buy.

No HDV.

I'm waiting for AVCHD.

Period.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

[Brian Ellis]

Have shot hundreds of mini-DV tapes. Have one tape that doesn't play (needs re-spooling because the dog chewed it when he was a puppy). Way back over 10 years ago, I deliberately lightly crumpled a tape to see what happened. It still played over the crumpled bit with only a couple of blocky artefacts. I use only new tapes and keep the used ones as archives. Even the 10+ y-o ones still play perfectly.

You have given two potential causes for your problem: a) old tapes (I bet you never wound/rewound them before using them again, as is recommended for all tapes of all types, to relieve tensions due to temp and humidity changes) and/or b) cheapo cams with inadequate tape drives. I've been using the same prosumer cam for all of the 10+ years I've shot in mini-DV and it still works perfectly (it was repaired and overhauled once).

Can't say I have anything against tapes.

And am not waiting for HD of any type! SD is just fine for me.

[paulw]

[QUOTE=Jerrold Jones]Spent part of the day shooting MiniDV.

Got home.

Tape errors.

Old tapes.

Have to buy new ones now.

TAPE IS LAME.


How long had you been using these tapes?? After about 4 times I retire the tape as a perminant archive.. With Hi8 I only used them once..

[Jerry Jones]

You're wrong again, Brian.

I did a fast-forward all the way to the end of each tape reel and then I rewound each tape reel.

And I used a Sony DCR-VX1000 -- the first three-chip prosumer camcorder -- for five years and I got the same problem with that model as these consumer camcorders I now use.

It's ever-so-subtle.

The tape errors are not easy to see.

But if you pay attention and study each scene very carefully, you'll see the teeny-tiny tape errors... about one per minute.

They're too small for most people to notice.

But I notice them and they bother me.

When I record directly to my notebook computer's hard disk, I get none of these tiny tape errors.

That's one advantage of the DVD camcorders.

I still have the clips I shot with my Panasonic VDR-M30, which was one of the first DVD camcorders to be introduced to the market.

Not one clip from that DVD camcorder is flawed by tape errors.

Not one!

The only disadvantage of that early DVD camcorder model was that the beautiful scenes it could capture were limited to scenes that would not stress the MPEG-2 encoder too much.

The live MPEG-2 capture was stressed by certain types of scenes and not by others.

For example, I still have clips from my trip to the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon.

They're gorgeous.

But the scenes I recorded of the ocean waves on a cloudy day were not as nice because of the artifacting that resulted from the wave action, etc.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

You have given two potential causes for your problem: a) old tapes (I bet you never wound/rewound them before using them again, as is recommended for all tapes of all types, to relieve tensions due to temp and humidity changes) and/or b) cheapo cams with inadequate tape drives.

[Jerry Jones]

As I mentioned, I've recorded DV directly to my laptop's hard disk and the clips are absolutely perfect... unlike my experience with tape.

So I'm going to take this a step further and buy a portable hard disk recorder.

I'm looking at the Bella Catapult, which is supposed to allow you to record DV directly to iPods or -- even better -- USB 2.0 hard disks.

http://tinyurl.com/zobky

I'm also looking at the CitiDisk DV:

http://tinyurl.com/zzex5

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

Perhaps you're not wrong after all, Brian.

I've done some more testing.

After I encode the video on the MiniDV tapes to be MPEG-2, I no longer notice any playback errors.

The data on the tape, therefore, must be perfect because the MPEG-2 playback is perfect.

So -- apparently -- what I'm seeing is a problem associated with my computer's ability to accurately display the playback of DV .avi files.

Well, it's still irritating.

But I guess I can live with it.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

P.S. I still maintain that I've seen too many verifiable tape errors over the years.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

I'm anxiously awaiting some good reviews of Sony's new HDR-SR1.

HD and hard drive. Hopefully the picture quality will be there too.

If they come in positive I think I'm going to give this one a try.

- Mark

[Jerry Jones]

Mark,

Douglas Spotted Eagle made a few posts on the topic on the DVINfo.net Web site.

He apparently had the good fortune to test the 8 cm disc model... the HDR-UX1.

http://tinyurl.com/ld6uh

His basic message seems to be that AVCHD -- as manifested by the new Sony models -- isn't "there" yet.

Well, I agree with him that the first models are not likely to be truly "pro" cameras.

On the other hand, nobody expects that.

(At least I don't.)

There's no big "confusion" on that point.

We know the first models are going to be consumer camcorders.

They'll be consumer cameras with a few features that pros like to have.

I disagree with what he seems to be suggesting relative to AVCHD, namely, that it's going to take a "long time" before that format matures to be a "pro" format with real "pro" cameras.

Of course, it depends on your definition of a "long time."

But I'd estimate it's only going to take 18 months to 2 years and HDV will be history.

Then we'll see the truly "pro" AVCHD models.

In his review, he mentioned the weaknesses of the AVCHD format and he hints that it fails to hold up well in multi-layer composites... macroblocking... etc.

Funny thing is, however, the SAME problems exist with HDV.

As far as I'm concerned, the only advantage HDV has right now is the fact that there are new semi-pro models available now and there are editing solutions available now.

But that's about it.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

Well, I've defragmented my laptop's hard disk and that has improved the DV .avi playback.

Still, I see the very slight "bump" in the picture every now and then.

But these DV .avi playback anomalies disappear when I encode to MPEG-2.

So the data must be fine.

I suppose this is why the DV .avi file format is an editing format and not a "delivery" format.

Still, I can remember one time when my MiniDV cassette literally disintegrated.

It worked fine for about a year.

But one day I inserted it into my camcorder to re-capture its contents.

The material on the surface of the tape literally began to flake off as it played in the camcorder.

I admit that has only happened to me once since I started editing MiniDV in 1997.

But it was enough to convince me that it can happen.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

By the way, CamcorderInfo.com has posted a review of JVC's latest three-chip STANDARD DEFINITION camcorder that records to hard disk.

It's the new GZ-MG505 model.

Apparently, JVC has improved the series this time.

The review was quite positive -- except this particular model features super-saturated colors.

Anyway, I was surprised to see the resolution numbers.

CamcorderInfo.Com's David Kender reports that "in 4:3, the camcorder produced 401.2 lines of horizontal resolution and 388.2 lines of vertical resolution."

How does that compare to my single-chip JVC GR-DF550 MiniDV model?

"In 4:3 mode, the GR-DF550 gave us approximately 336.3 lines of horizontal resolution and 269.9 lines of vertical resolution."

The reason I bought the less-expensive (less than $350) GR-DF550, however, was what I read about its low light performance and, in that respect, I am not disappointed.

The low light performance of this tiny MiniDV camcorder is simply the best I've seen of any single-chip camera and it performs the task for which I am using it very, very well.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

The JVC GZ-MG505 review is here:

http://tinyurl.com/qzg7k

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

Jerry,

I had a look around the DVInfo.net site and couldn't seem to locate that review. Could you provide me with a link?

Thanks,

Mark

[wkulecz]

A dear friend passed away last week, and I ended up editing some 20+ year old VHS tapes to put together a memorial. VHS was never very good and "portable" camcorders back then were terrible by todays standards, but all the tapes were fine except one that came to me with the shell and tape broken, but I lost only a few seconds of data by moving the reels to a new shell and splicing the tape.

Lets talk in 20 years about how readable/unreadable CDs and DVDs are. I've already had several: burn DVD, verify, store on booksheld in jewel box, and a few years later disk is unreadable! Fortunately the stuff remaind on the hard drive in a removable carrier sitting on the same bookshelf.

--wally.