Tape transport failure experiences?

[Hulk]

As you probably know I have been patiently waiting for an affordable HD camera with good image quality that uses Flash based media. I'm still waiting.

I think my perhaps irrational aversion of tape transports goes back to my Canon Optura Pi camcorder. I remember I was shooting some video one day and when I pressed the eject button the transport froze. Nothing I did would open it and I eventually had to get it repaired. It cost around $250. That really bugged me because I know I never mishandled the camera, it didn't have a lot of hours on it, and I always used high quality tapes.

I am wondering if my tape transport experience was atypical or the norm?

[Brian Ellis]

If my experience is typical, your's is atypical! I've had two highly used mini-DVs, poth Panasonic, and three VHS-C camcorders with literally hundreds of tapes through each of 4 of the cams. They have travelled all over the world in all climates and under all conditions (you should see the 1996 Panasonic; the original surface finish is worn through in places!). I have had breakdowns, but they have all been electronic, except when I dropped one about a metre, breaking the lens assembly from the body, which was repaired and went on fine for years after. I have used tapes of many makes in all the cams.

In all these cases, I have never had a tape problem in any of the cams. In fact, I have one problematic mini-DV tape (I think it was a Sony) which made a rubbing noise but worked fine otherwise. The only fatal tape problem was when our dog, while a puppy, chewed a mini-DV, but I don't think that is a problem that could be ascribed to the tape.

I have all these tapes in an enormous box (my archives!).

[Jerry Jones]

The problem I experienced was in connection with the one of the first "pocket" MiniDV camcorders by JVC... the GR-DVM5U.

1. The image quality of that model was not nearly as good as the MiniDV format allowed.

2. The JVC MiniDV tapes that I put into it failed to work properly. The tapes physically looked perfect. But when I tried to play them in that camcorder and in any other camcorder, they produced an awful digital mess... as if the surface of the tape was literally flaking off... causing the image to be blocky and beyond any salvation.

That was an early bitter experience for me in connection with tape.

On the other hand, I used the Sony DCR-VX1000 for about six years at the City of Boise Public Works Department and I never experienced any such issues.

In addition, I still have two single-chip MiniDV tape camcorders... the JVC GR-DF550 and the Panasonic PV-DC152 and everything seems to be working.

Still, I would feel more confident if I were using a camcorder that uses SD cards.

The other great thing about non-tape camcorders is the quick random access, obviously.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

In addition to tape failure, however, I should also mention that I've recently had two (2) music audio CDs fail. They didn't look to be scratched significantly. And I even took them to a record store to have them use one of those machines that supposedly takes the scratches out.

Didn't work.

Two dead music audio CDs.

So optical media -- especially the kind not enclosed in a protective cartridge such as DVD-RAM or Sony MiniDiscs -- are also suspect, in my humble opinion.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

Yes, I've had more probs with optical media, especially DVD±R, than with mini-DV or VHS-C. Also occasionally CD-R/RW, mainly because modern DVD writers don't like 5-y-old CD-Rs for writing. I would say that I probably have 100 JVC mini-DVD tapes and never have had a problem with them.

[Dr Mordrid]

Record your discs at less than the maximun speed and they'll last longer.

Beyond that I also store my discs in opaque plastic & red or orange colored crystal cases. This largely filters out UV, which not only comes with sunlight but from fluorescents and can deteriorate the dyes used in burnable CD/DVD's.

This simulates what TDK has done with their "Armor Plated" media, but without their 2x speed limit.

[ND66]

None up to date, and I even have the Sony mini DV camcorder... .
Used and abused.

.

[Brian Ellis]

Record your discs at less than the maximun speed and they'll last longer.

Beyond that I also store my discs in opaque plastic & red or orange colored crystal cases. This largely filters out UV, which not only comes with sunlight but from fluorescents and can deteriorate the dyes used in burnable CD/DVD's.

This simulates what TDK has done with their "Armor Plated" media, but without their 2x speed limit.

Sorry, cannot agree with you. The sensitive spectrum for CDs and DVDs is in the IR and near-visible red, not UV. Red cases would let these straight through. Only HD-DVD and BluRay are sensitive to the blue end of the visible spectrum and, even then, not into UV. The tests done by the NIST experiments on the light-fastness show that heat (IR) is more damaging than light, although the combination of the two may be fatal.

Our results show that the effects of direct light exposure
cannot be ignored. The spectral wavelength of
metal halide is close to what may be expected within
the higher spectrum of sunlight. Depending on the
media type and intensity of the light, a disc may fail due
to exposure to direct sunlight in as little as a few weeks.
This will be especially true when coupled with the heating
effect of exposure to sunlight or combined with any
other heat source. For archival purposes, however, light
is a less challenging issue since it is relatively simple to
avoid direct light exposure or prolonged exposure to
any damaging light source.

This has made me think that HD-DVD and BR blanks may not be available in RW form. CD-RW and DVD-RW discs work, not on the principle of a photochemical reaction of a dye layer occasioned by pulses from an IR laser, but by phase changes of the crystalline state of a quaternary metal-alloy layer, due to the heat generated by the absorption of the same wavelength of IR. The shorter wavelength light of the HD burners would not be absorbed by the metal layer, so no significant heating effect would occur to cause a phase change, producing a change of reflectivity.

In any case, my problems, with one exception, have not been due to longevity but burning faults or, in the case of old CD-R blanks, their not being recognised by modern burners. This is nothing to do with age, as they work perfectly with old burners; the modern ones don't like 1x or 2x CD blanks of any make. The one exception was with a single make of DVD-R 2x blank whose dye layer was such that the thermopolymerisation didn't stop with no exposure but continued to spread slowly over time. Result: they were perfect for about a year but, by two years, they had become unreadable. The manufacturer replaced the 50 blanks I bought (at about $5 each at the time) with 200 4x discs which have worked perfectly over years. This was an unfortunate manufacturing fault and had nothing to do with either light or heat exposure.

I always burn (note that the word 'burn' implies heat, not light) at half the rated speed or less.

[wkulecz]

Whatever the technical reasons, the facts remain that "burned" optical media is a poor excuse for back-up or archive of data. Our lab learned this lession the hard way when the first "magneto-optical" drives and disks came out, the mass-market lower priced stuff that followed has been even less reliable.

Since the dawn of personal computers I've never lost any data that was stored on at least two hard drives. WIth 500GB drives "on-sale" for for $150 why mess around with anything else?

Instead of messing around with expensive flash RAM why not put a notebook hard drive in a standarized carrier for HD camcorders. I got a 120 GB drive for $100 this is less than $1/GB while decent DV tapes are about $4/13GB but not needing to rewind the hard drive should more than pay for the difference with time savings on any paying gig.

--wally.