Monday, January 18, 2016

[Avid-L2] Current Day Reliability of SR Tape Stock?

 

I've been working on a four episode series and we've had at least 3 instances of tape hits and or bad tape on the master clones.  On most I could either relay the video or worst case reblack the tape and reoutput.  One tape I definitely confirmed tape damage as it still showed the hit at approximately the same time code after being reblacked.  To me 3 out of 4 episodes with clone issues tape hits and or channel errors would point to a faulty machine.  The facility has recently had the machines serviced with new heads as needed so I'm at a loss to explain all the tape issues.  In my personal experience with SR tape over the last 10 years or so I've only had a handful of damaged tapes.  I've had issues with Avid punch outs causing a tape anomaly at the out point but that can be repaired with an assemble edit.

The dub facility told me that "Everyone" knows there is a certain percentage of SR stock that will be bad and even the networks are aware of this.  I can't refute the experience of another person or facility but that just hasn't been my experience.  I was also told that bad tape stock is so common the Tape vendors will no longer warranty SR tape stock and you have to return it directly to Sony for any warranty related issue.  I've never heard of this before but I'm not in the tape dubbing business.

I spoke with a co worker who actually managed a dub facility from 2006 to 2012 and he said in that entire time they probably had 5 tapes that were actually damaged.  So I'm curious is there nowadays more problems with SR stock than I've been experiencing?  Could the EOL of SR decks contribute a lower quality of available tape stock.  We are talking new stock not the used evaluated stock.  I'm curious what others have been experiencing with SR tapes and also machine to machine interchange.
 
John Moore Barking Trout Productions Studio City, CA bigfish@pacbell.net

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Posted by: John Moore <bigfish@pacbell.net>
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this is the Avid-L2

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