Rewinding tapes

[Ian Woodward]

Can anyone come up with a practical solution to the perennial question of what is the best method for rewinding tapes?

We are frequently told that if tapes are rewound in the camcorder it will cause wear on the record/playback heads.

Conversely, if a tailor-made rewinding machines are used - we hear; so I've never bought one - the tapes stand a good chance of being minced up.

Any ideas for those who, like me, do not have the odd, old camcorder kicking around that be seconded to rewind tapes?

Ian Woodward

[Michael Slowe]

I have to say that I am constantly amazed that serious film makers can produce without the use of a deck. If you're recording to tape you have to review the footage, possibly many times, decide what to take in for the edit and then play it to acquire. Do people do all this using the camera, not to mention the final mastering the finished production to tape?

Ian, never mind the re wind, what about the wear on your camera heads doing all that I have just listed?

[Dave Watterson]

I seem to remember Tom Hardwick once suggesting that since serious film makers tend to update with new cameras every couple of years, the chances of wearing out our heads or drive mechanisms is pretty small.

Michael - is it not simpler to take all the raw footage from the camera into you computer system and do the comparison and choice there? Surely you do not save much time by winding to and fro to download to computer only the takes you need.

Dave

[Ian Woodward]

Thanks Dave and Michael.

Actually, I download each tape onto a computer for editing and it is there that I choose what images I need.

The only occasion I rewind is the one and only time I rewind the tape back to the beginning in readiness for transfering it onto the computer.

This is the rewinding I'm talking about.

I'd still like to know what the best method is for doing the rewinding without using the camcorder and without having to use rewind machines that tangle up tapes and eat them for breakfast.

As "serious" a film-maker as I am, I have neither the desire, the need, or the capital to change camcorders every couple of years!

Ian

[Gavin Gration]

Hi Ian,

I understand your concern but cannot see any magic solution.

Camcorders are designed to record, rewind and play their own recordings. The technology has been perfected over the years and then engineered down to achieve the cheapest possible end product. I've been in the video industry for a good few years and have yet to see the heads fail on a camcorder. A failure in the transport mechanism is far more common.

While it's easy to say that a good film maker would buy a deck I cannot understand why an amateur would "need" to go to such expense unless they had a loads and loads of tapes (like a judge/club sec.) or loads of money to spare.

Here's another way of looking at the same issue. I have around a dozen cameras in VERY regular use doing video to DVD transfers. The cameras are a mixed bag of Digital8, DV and HDV all purchased second hand. I also have a number of HDV, DVCAM, Hi8 decks and DV Walkmans. I wouldn't consider wearing out my expensive editing decks copying customers' tapes to DVD when I can use much cheaper cameras to do the job.

Gavin Gration

[Brian Saberton]

I have a spare camera no longer used for filming that I employ as a deck, but when editing I transfer everything into the computer so the tape only makes one pass in the camera.

[Ian Woodward]

Forive my ignorance - what is a deck?

A walking area on a ship?

[Dave Watterson]

.. and a trendy wooden platform in the garden to hold the barbecue ...

In this case a deck is a tape drive mechanism which can be used to record or playback but which does not have lenses like a camera - and may or may not have its own little screen built-in. The idea is that they stay at your editing station and are used to feed video in to the computer and record outgoing films.

In practice most of the decks I have seen are pretty obviously camera mechanisms diverted from the production line and stuck in a different case by the manufacturers. They are expensive. Sony's is about £1,200 and JVC's about £1,600

Which confirms hints from the previous comments ... use a cheap camera as a deck if you do not want to risk your precious camcorder. If you hunt on eBay and the like you may find ones with damaged lenses going cheaply, but even to buy new the basic Samsung camera is about £50.

- Dave

[Michael Slowe]

I must say I've never seen a decent edit suite without at least one deck in it but there you go. How else to make copies from a master tape long after the timeline has been wiped from the computer?

As for taking everything in as shot, what a waste of time and as I had shot 35 hours of HD for a recent project even with over 4 TB's of external storage it would have been impossible.

Animated conversations please later this month at BIAFF?

[Ian Woodward]

Thanks again for your insights, Dave, Gavin, Brian, and Michael.

The common consensus for solving, in a cheap and practical way, the problem of rewinding MiniDV tapes without causing unnecessary damage to the "parent" camera, seems to be to use an old camera, or certainly a camera that is no longer being used for principal filming.

The camcorders I use are the Canon XL2 and the Canon Legria HV40.

I have a no-longer-in-use Canon MV750i (aspect ratio 4:3) which I could utilise as a "deck" - wow! I feel very professional using that term, though being a member of the IAC I'm obviously an amateur (actually, I'm in Seventh Heaven when IAC forums are conducted in amateur-speak rather than professional techno-speak or a “speak” that preaches to the converted and which is inclined to forget that some of us have not yet taken the road to videodom Damascus).

But this raises a sub-menu - sorry, I mean, it raises a rewind question within a rewind question.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that it is not a good idea to use a tape that has been recorded on Camcorder 1 (say) in the tape compartment of Camcorder to 2. That is, if a tape recorded on 1. is rewound over the surface of 2's Rec/Play heads, it could compromise or corrupt the tape (eg cause intermittent pixilation) – a shock horror catastrophe which will only be revealed when the recorded images are downloaded onto the computer for editing.

I don't know.

Is all this just an apocryphal story or some exaggerated mythology I've remembered from the past in my not-very-technically-imbued head?

PS: Oh, and will using an outmoded 4:3 camcorder to rewind a tape that has been recorded on a dedicated 16:9 camera have any adverse effect on the precious tape? Will it "confuse" the technology?

Ian

[Michael Slowe]

Ian, sorry if I caused any confusion by calling a deck a deck but that's what they are, like an old tape recorder but for video tape rather than audio tape - no great technological mystery. I'm as amateur as you and have visited countless clubs within the IAC umbrella where they play their films through a deck.

In answer to one of your later questions I can say that the aspect ration that a camera acquires its pictures at will make no difference to the tape you are re winding. I have however heard it said that people prefer to use the same camera for a given tape, something to do with the alignment of the heads, but that would be for actually shooting. Tom Hardwick will be the man to opine on all this and I'll bring the thread to his attention.

[tom hardwick]

First off, rewinding (or fast forwarding come to that) will not damage video heads as the tape is held off the head drum itself by a cushion of air. If you cue and review (where you can see the pictures being played in fast time) then that is indeed contact with the heads and does cause head wear. So too does recording, replaying and leaving the tape in pause.

I honestly feel there's no problems whatsoever in using your camcorder as a wind / rewind machine, though generally they're terribly slow at doing this. My DSR-11 deck rewinds at frightening speed, but accelerates and decelerates beautifully smoothly at each end of the tape. Some camcorders don't do this - they just wind till the tape comes to an end and this triggers the stop. Not as nice mechanically.

Ian - no problems at all about recording onto a tape and replaying /rewinding that tape in another camera / deck - as long as the tape hasn't been horribly crumpled. Remember the tape heads spin at 900rpm with a writing speed approaching 10 metres per second (DV or HDV) so any crinkle is seen as a flying brick.

The tape cannot get 'confused' by a deck. The tape emulsion only contains ones and zeros - nothing else. This is the same for DV LP, SP, DVCAM, HDV, you name it.

So carry on using your camcorder to rewind I'd say. I've never ever heard of a DV deck's motor burning out.

tom.

[Geoff Addis]

Ian,

Whilst playing a tape back on a camera/deck other than on the one on which it had been recorded is most unlikely to damage. Sometimes, and these days it is very rare, tapes recorded on one machine may not playback correctly on another, if this is the case, then the head alignment in one or the other of the cameras/decks is out of spec, but that shouldn't damage the tape. The only possibility of damage is if the tape transport, including the guides, has been physically worn in a way so to induce scraping of the tape's magnetic coating; of couse, any deposits of oxide on the mechanism can transfer to tape so causing playback problems, but if normal tape head and guide cleaning procedures are followed this should not be the case. For what its worth, I have, over the years, played back hundreds of tapes on numerous decks other than in the camera in which they have been recorded and have never had problems caused by so doing.

Geoff

[Ian Woodward]

With the welcome reassurance of Geoff, Michael, Dave, Brian, Gavin and, now , Tom, I feel comfortable with the rewind issue.

This morning I rewound, on a no-longer-used Canon MV7501 camcorder, 12 tapes I’d recorded on my Canon XL2, and I didn’t feel at all apprehensive about it!

And muchas gracias, Tom, for explaining one or two other things I’d wondered about.

One last question (which has nothing to do with the above).

I will in future be using my Canon MV750i as a rewind deck, but the camera’s LCD screen is very dull. I can barely see the words, etc, on it.

Unlike my Canon Legria HV40, which has a button to increase brightness, the MV750i does not appear to.

Any advice on how to make its LCD screen brighter would be appreciated.

Ian

[tom hardwick]

No menu option available for upping the screen brightness Ian? I bet there is, and when you find it you'll find that it's been inadvertently turned right down.

tom.