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Using unused tape ….good idea or not?
Hey
I have a small problem. I have a wedding tomorrow and I’m sorta short on tapes. I have an extra tape right in front of me, which I have only used 5 minutes of…the rest of the 55 minutes is still good. IS it OKAY, for me to find to reuse the rest the of 55 minutes to do my other recordings on? Obviously I know its bad to retape over things, but in this case I’m just using up the tape I didn’t use
Thanks!
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3 Replies
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I would just start after the first 5 min. The rest is virgin tape and will be fine. I never reuse tape as to the possibility of drop outs. With the exception of the Sony HDCAM, tape is pretty cheap these days.
Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
THis is more of a filing problem two jobs on the same tape but there is nothing wrong with doing it. I would go 30 seconds past the stopping point of where you are now, then put down a minute of bar and tone, back the tape up to 10 seconds or so, so your TC will pick up from the bars.
This is just to give you safety so you don’t record over the first job and you have a good running start to fresh TC for capturing the new job.
The other reason a lot of people don’t like to do this is what happens if you need to hand over the tape to the client, you then have to dub the tape first.
But IMO there is no technical reason why you cannot use the tape again.
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Even if the tape have been used few times it shouldn’t be a problem to recycle.
ENG people used the same Betacam tape dozens of times.
MiniDV tapes are no that strong but few use shouldn’t damage them.
Best,
rafael
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