On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 03:41:14 GMT, "Terry P." wrote:

>I recall a buddy of mine saying that he will only use Sony MiniDV tapes in
>his camcorder, claiming that he heard that different brands of tapes used in
>the same machine can cause playback glitches.
>
>I just ordered a camcorder and got the same information from a salesperson,
>though the gentleman qualified it by stating that in 5% of the cases where
>people mix different brands of tapes in the same machine, the differing
>chemicals used in the tapes can react with one another, causing a build-up
>on the tape head and thus playback (and recording?) glitches.
>
>Is there truth to this or is it just rumor?
>
>The salesperson also recommended Fuji MiniDV tapes for two reasons: 1)
>professional quality, a brand commonly used in professional broadcasting,
>and 2) consumer convenience, as you can get them at CircuitCity so if you
>need one quick, you can get one and still use only Fuji tapes in your
>machine, as described above.
>
>Would love to benefit from the cumulative wisdom of all of you DV veterans
>out there -- do tape brands make a lot of difference? If so, are Fuji tapes
>considered high quality tapes? I greatly appreciate all of your input.

Look at the recent tales of woe in these r.v NGs concerning
major dropout problems for part of the answer... While there
is no definitive answer for your question from any source,
user or manufacturer, enough problems have been seen to
indicate that either staying with one tape brand, or
regularly mixing tape brands, is the way to go... BTW, this
latter way is complicated by there only being two makers
of Mini-DV tape, Sony and Panasonic, so it is hard to know
who actually makes the other brands one may be trying to
mix - they may actually be the same tape (which may explain
why some people report no problems mixing brands, and others
do...). I had a problem with my first tape, a Panasonic,
used in my first camcorder, a VX700 (which had had only Sony
tape in it). I "retired" that tape and never used anything
but Sony again, and after about 300 tapes, have had
almost no dropouts larger than one small square offset by
one frame every 5 hours or so...