Tapes vs SD cards

[Tuna-Salad 0]

Forgive my ignorance here....

Why are the mini dv tapes preferred over SD cards? It seems more cash effective to just upload the files off an SD card than have to buy new tapes. Can the tapes be used multiple times? Thanks.

Millions of my potential children died on your daughters' face last night.

[pilotdave 0]

They both have advantages and disadvantages. I'm not ready to go tapeless... When I fill a tape, I pop in another. They cost less than $3 each and hold an hour of footage. I can firewire footage from one minidv camera to another... very convenient. Memory card cameras require you to dump the footage SOMEWHERE, or keep buying very expensive memory cards.

But memory card cameras will be the way to go. They're really convenient for some things. You can transfer footage faster than real time. That would be awesome. It's also easy to carry an extra memory card in a jumpsuit pocket... I do that for my still camera already, just in case. I don't carry an extra tape with me.

I definitely prefer tape, but I'll change my mind one of these days... I won't have a choice.

Dave

[DSE 5]

I'm on the flip side from Dave. On the business side, we've been tapeless for nearly 4 years, and on the skydiving side, been tapeless for all of this season and a good share of last season.
A card can hold as little as 22 mins of footage and as much as 90 mins, and Xfers ridiculously faster to an HDD than tape can. Card may be reformatted in about 7 seconds and ready to fly. No rewinding, and makes debriefing instant.
However....there is no archive. You must/have to think about your workflow and how you wish to store. You either always need a 'puter around, or need to have a drive reader/bin. I happen to have both. Drives are cheap, about the cost of a case of good quality tape (I don't shoot the $3.00 crap).
You should never reuse tape, although a lot of guys do.

[pilotdave 0]

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(I don't shoot the $3.00 crap)

Sony Premium MiniDV tapes are crap?

Dave

[DSE 5]

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Sony Premium MiniDV tapes are crap?

I'll put it a different way...
We don't trust projects to that grade of tape, DV or HDV.
AMEII, always.

[Waldschrat 0]

I think this is a little exaggerated. I did use standard tapes multiple for years, works great for me.

[DSE 5]

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I think this is a little exaggerated. I did use standard tapes multiple for years, works great for me.

My business makes a living, full-time, shooting video. Standard grade tape, the error correction tha it offers, and the already extremely compromised quality of DV data require (IMO) that we use the best source possible on which to record.
Your needs may vary. For critical project work, we also use enterprise-grade drives while many folks would say "Nothing wrong with Costo drives, they work great for me."
we don't have that luxury.
But heck, I also use UDMA CF cards, too.