mini dv cassettes

Can any of you comment on the quality of mini dv tapes - they vary a great deal in price, and a digital format should give perfect recordings. Is there a reason to buy the most expensive ones? any suggestions?

I'm hoping to get back into shooting video during my trip to thailand/indonesia.

Sony originally made the tapes with small flash ROM's but never really took advantage of them. Eventually they offered the tapes with and without the flash IC's and that explains a great deal of the cost difference. My personal feeling is forget the IC's and save the money. Most other manufactures don't even offer the IC.

The only difference I know of between DV tapes is the choice of wet or dry lubricant. The standing advice is to not switch between wet and dry, but I don't know of a source that says which tape uses what (can anyone help?). I feel that you choose one manufacturer of tape and stick with it since that avoids the lubricant issue. The only problem I ever had was caused by that. Also, if you use the 80 minute tapes make sure they work first. I've had problems with the last 15 minutes of 80 minute tapes.

Whatever you do, be sure to take a cleaning tape with you. At the first sign of a problem, like a single playback glitch, use the cleaning tape. I've shot a lot of hours and, that one problem aside, my tapes have always been trouble-free.

The big differences will be in durability over multiple passes.

If you're going to shoot, archive, and use the tape only for compiling and editing later into projects, then it probably doesn't matter.

If you intend to re-use tapes time and time again, then it might matter.

Any of the name brands are probably fine. I personally use Maxell and Sony; I got a good deal on some Maxells, but then found an online supplier of the Sony tapes in lots of 10 that were price-competitive, so I bought those.

Craig's advice on the cleaning tape is spot on - one warning though, never run that cleaning tape for more than 10 seconds at a crack. It works by abrasion (!) and creates HEAT in the video heads when its used. Excessive use can actually cause heat damage to the recording gap - that's permanent, and if you manage to do it will require head replacement.

One more tip - always pre-stripe your tapes (record them through with the lens cap on) before use. This insures that the time code is not broken and that scene capture in your software, along with cataloging (if supported), will work correctly.

It also makes it easy to know where you are on the tape (if you log where the last sequence ended, you can then return there pretty easily in VCR mode to add more footage - most cameras will not do an "end search" once the tape is ejected, unless the tape has the memory chip in it.)

Woe be to you if you screw this up and your editing software throws up on the broken time code - and many software packages will do exactly that.