On Sat, 9 Sep 2000 21:06:56 -0400 (EDT), Gocycle@webtv.net (Gocycle) wrote:

>SONY had a lubricant on the early MiniDV tapes which caused some type of
>varnishing on the video heads when mixed with lubricants found on other
>tape manufacturer's tape stock.
>
>It is my understanding that SONY changed the formulation and perhaps the
>new mixture is causing your problems when mixing with the older
>lubricant found on the original SONY tape.

Yes, that is what I was asking - has anyone else experienced
this when going from old-type Sony tape to the new...? I had
been using a TRV-9 as my "deck" for viewing tape and for
up/down-loading to computer, and had been careful NEVER to
put any tape but Sony early-type into any of my camcorders
(and never a tape that had been played in another machine
that may have had any other tape type in it). As a result, drop-outs have been essentially non-existent. Of course I
recently ran out of the early-type of Sony tape, and put a
couple of the newer ones (DVM-60PR2) in the TRV-9 (which
has visible "clouding" on the head, but which had had no
record/play problems) - the results were almost immediate:
first recording became unreliable, then playback, and tapes
that had been in the TRV-9 did not play back reliably in
other camcorders (dropouts). I suspected the major part of
the problem may have been due to the built-up of the old
lubricants in the TRV-9, so I ran a cleaning tape through
the newer camcorders, and switched those to the newer tape
(rare drop-outs, but they are there, alas...). (Running the
cleaning tape through the TRV-9 did not help.) I would say
that if the old-type Sony tape is not compatible with the
new, and Sony does not continue to supply the old-type,
that this is kind of a nasty situation... I'm asking for other's
experience with this (though I'm aware that many
people do not see one-frame-duration drop-outs that occupy
only one "square" in the image, and also that these are
visible with motion [most of my images "move", with motion
in all parts of the frame, but if you plant a camera on a
tripod, and little moves within the frame, you may not
see most of the drop-out correction]). Please post here
your experiences mixing old and new Sony Mini-DV tape
types (DVM-60EX or PR vs. DVM60EX2 or PR2). Thanks.