I've heard that certain brand cameras use lubricated mini dv tapes and others don't. For example (and I'm not sure if this is true)- Sony uses lubricated mini dv tapes and therefore if you put a sony mini dv tape into a Panasonic camera (who uses a non-lubricated tape) it may cause your Panasonic camera heads to malfunction over time. The same for vice versa.
Can anyone shed some light on this? Has anyone heard anything about this? Does anyone know anything about this?
The different brands use different lubricants.
None of them will damage the heads. However, changing
brands is what causes problems. Pick one brand and stick
with it is the advice I got when I bought my first miniDV
camera. I have never used anything but Panasonic AY-DVM63MQ.
My business partner uses Canon cameras and is always
changing tapes. He has lots of problems with dirty and
gummed heads and drop outs - I have none.
So it seems pretty good advice.
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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
From what I've heard, this hasn't been true since the 1990s; certainly I swapped tapes all the time in my TRV900 and never really had any problems.
I bought my first miniDV camera in 1999 (JVC DV500) and the
one time I used a Sony tape it gummed up the heads. All the
experience regarding my friend is since 2000. Now he uses
nothing but Sony tapes and doesn't have problems.
So there you go. There is no definitive answer. Mark has no
problems with different tapes - I have. I guess the good news is,
I've never heard that using only Sony tapes in a Panasonic
camera will cause the heads to malfunction. The three times
I used the AG-HVX200 we used only Sony tapes and there were
no problems.
=============================================
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
Sure, if there is a problem it will be due to mixing tapes, not due to putting another manufacturer's tape in your camcorder. So if you always use the same tape, regardless of who made it, you should be fine.
That said, I believe that at one point Sony made some tapes with wet lubricant and some with dry lubricant, so mixing different types of Sony tape would have caused problems!
