I own a Digital-8 camcorder. I have about 12 hi-8 tapes, and don't plan to purchase any more. Soon I will run out of room to film, and will need to record over existing material. I know to blackmark(or film the entire tape first w/ lens cap on), before filming something, but when I want to re-tape over that material, do I need to black mark it again? If I do or don't, will the tape show part of the image from previous recordings?(signal bleeds through or something) I know this is common in audio tapes, VHS tapes, ect., I don't know if it will happen with digital tapes. Please only answare if you have had previous exprerience like this , thanks.

Well, My experience has been with DV tapes, so, it should apply to Digital 8 as well. It wasnt a problem for me, although black marking it again might not be a bad idea, it shouldnt be necessary. I have never experienced image bleed through. Now, multipule recordings will end in loss of picture quality eventually, but its digital, which alows for very little resoulution loss per generation, so once, maybe even twice shouldnt be that bad, but I deffinentley wouldnt do more than that. Eventually, you will have to buy more tapes, but if that dosent fit the budget right now, make do with what you have. Better to make something over old tapes, then nothing at all.
R. Michael McWhorter

And you shall know us by the trail of dead.

Hmm, So say I record a full production on a DV Tape thats straight out of the wrapping is that okay?

Now what If I record over the same tape again is that okay?

Would doing the second thing cause the tape heads to get dirty?

WHat is blackmarking and why do you do it?

The reason I say this is, recently I went out to film a short movie for a Mid-Term grade and it just happens that right before we filmed I got a Tape-Head error and spent 2-Hours locating and buying a Tape-Head Cleaner. And by then the whole thing had fallen into shambles. Now I have a bunch of DV Tapes with useless footage on them and would like to tape over them. How should I go about that?

It will not bleed through.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

I guess I'll just start taping over the hours of stuff I have now. By the way, I only heard blackmarking was important. I will continue to do that though, because you are able to timecode very easlily and have a numerical position exactly where you are on the tape, instead of blindly tracking on the blue screen. Although I heard someone else say you can tape over dv 5 times max, I will probraly just ignore that since Chris said otherwise. (You know he's the pro..)

Darkfire:

Your fine. Go ahead and tape over em, it wont do anything. In filschool (atleast were I go) students record over the tapes used by the last semester, and so on, and so forth. Over, and over again. Ive never heard of there being a problem, and Im sure some of them have been used 20, or 30 times. Your fine.
R. M. McWhorter

And you shall know us by the trail of dead.

I said that it won't bleed through - not that it is the greatest thing to reuse old stock.

I wouldn't recommend using the same tape over again...only if you NEED to. (or can't afford new stock)

It is "possible" for a tape to get damaged each time you play it or record it. Slight damage to the tape may cause drop outs to occur. (which is why making clones of your masters is a good idea before you begin editing - I don't always do it for budget reasons...but it is a great safety net)

As Tizzy said you can probably get away with it (and I have many times) BUT to be safe get new stock when you can.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

[This message was edited by Chris Wright on January 03, 2003 at 05:20 PM.]

Also...

You shouldn't need to black a DV tape. (blackmark? that is a new version of that term for me but it is the same as blacking)

I would only black a tape with timecode if you are going to do a digital cut to it.

Otherwise when you record to a blank tape from the camera it will assign timecode to it as it records. (On DV at least)

However it isn't a bad idea to black the beginning of the tape for a minute or so before the first shot so that you do have some pre-roll for capturing into your NLE.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

Ok, good. Just of found a Factory Fresh DV Tape under some furntiure. Not sure how the hell it got there. But its the small things in life that please you.

I work at a video productions company and my boss always records over used tapes. As has been said, "IT IS OKAY TO USE OLD TAPES".
Although, I would not use old tapes because they are archive tapes...don't you always want your original work to go back to? I do.

~Don't Let BUSH Exploit 911~
infinitie00@hotmail.com

Oh well in my case I know that I do, since I have some pretty stupid stuff or useless work. Ranging from 5-10 minutes of film for a shortfilm that say never got done to say.. Plays that ive filmed for Film Class. But yah like you said its smart to keep old productions not just as backups but also for reference.