Sorry, I forgot to ask this : I'd like to know if using Mini DV Cassette over again and again, will the movie quality decrease in the long run ? (After several times using the same DV Cassetter re-recorded).

Thank you very much.

Sunar.

-- Sunar Karjadi (rekotomo@denpasar.wasantara.net.id), June 07, 2000

Answers

The answer is "No" its a digital signal and unlike analogue a degrading in the digital tape can occur way below what is usable in analogue. I now use a D8 camera and reused hi8 tape. I have used hi8 tape that is 7 years old, been used for tape to tape editing and quite poor (almost un-usable) in analogue and it has been OK in DV. Quality of the tape, unlike analogue, has little or no bearing on the quality of the DV image.

A D8 camera will actually play hi8 tape but some of my early tapes no longer play images but have been over recorded in DV with no problems.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), June 07, 2000.

Like all good things, though, even D8 and DV tapes have to die sometime. I tried to test how this would go by taking a known really wretched, 5-year old SKC brand 8mm tape (with a previous, unwatchable analogue program on it) then recording onto it at least thirty times. It never skipped a bit even after the 25th time. On the 27th time, however, it would mute (no pix/sound) on the average of 5 secs in a 30 sec. period. that eventually grew to about 20 secs or so in the same period. During the periods there were pix/sound everything was perfect (no blockiness, no freeze frames); during the other periods there was nothing. I guess this is what we'd expect a digital medium to behave anyway.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), June 10, 2000.