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I may have been dreaming this but Ithough I read somewhere that Mini-DV tapes should only be used once. That if you tried to reuse them there would be dropouts. I thought about blanking the tape over after I was done with it and then try to reuse it but I wondered if anyone else is using there tapes over again.

60 minute tapes, I use them about three times and then use them for archive purposes. Never had trouble with dropouts as long as, the camera that I recoded on the tape, is the same one I use to load the information in the editor.

For long ceremonies such as the Catholic one's, I use 80 minute Sony Premium tapes and those I use only twice, but only if shooting continously with out stopping and starting. I find that the 80 minute tapes have a tendency of streching because they are tinner than the 60's. After using once, I bulk erase them and tell the people that help me shoot to be sure to run two minutes of bars before starting to shoot the service and run the tape without stopping. Never had a problem.

Of course now adays tape is so inexpensive, I'm sure most people use it only once.

A colleague of mine a long time ago got an email from either Panasonic or Sony, in which they said mini DV tapes are at least good through 270 pass-throughs before a drop-out, etc. should occur (and can certainly go well beyond that without any issue). So, conservatively, figure 135 times you could record on that tape and you should be just fine. Now, if the heads on your camera (or playback device) are chewing up the tape or causing more wear on the tape, that's another issue; but mini DV tape itself, pretty tough stuff.

THANK YOU ESTEEMED GENTLEMEN OF THE MSUS FORUM! I shall try to reuse some of my older raw tapes that I no longer need to save.

Yes, I do it all the time - totally agree with above posts.

That was Hi-8 tapes..............the worst dropout rate of all formats.

MikeMattke wrote:I may have been dreaming this but Ithough I read somewhere that Mini-DV tapes should only be used once. That if you tried to reuse them there would be dropouts. I thought about blanking the tape over after I was done with it and then try to reuse it but I wondered if anyone else is using there tapes over again.