tape reuse - black screens etc.

[jupita]

Hi

I am thinking of re-using some of my tapes. However I am unsure how to approach this. At the moment I have recorded some color bars onto the entire tape but vegas seems to put timecode in the file.

I am quite new to this and am not sure whether this approach is best. I need an application that will clear/prepare a tape for me.

I tried recording a section in the middle of the color bars to see how it read back and found that the color bars read fine, but my section in the middle came back as a black screen. Whats the issue here? Is it WinDV as this is what I use to capture? The contect plays fine in the middle ; its just fails to read back properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Junpit

[guns1inger]

I prep my tapes, including new ones, by recording black from start to finish (set it recording a darkened room with the lens cap on, mostly). This will put a continuous timecode across the length of the tape, as Vegas has done for you. Generally, DV only gets it's knickers in a twist when it loses the timecode on new tapes because of stoppping and starting. If there is a continuous timecode already laid down, this doesn't happen.

As to why you got black - don't know. Is it repeatable ?