Digital8 LP vs SP...21 years later

[ybarra]

So, just in case anyone is curious... LP seems to have held up very well for my camera (Sony TRV-720). The tape was a Maxell XR-Metal Hi-8 and it was stored on a bookshelf in my office for 21 years (Datecode is May 26, 2001). I'm using the AudioVisual Preservation Solutions DV Analyzer to look at my capture and no frames are flagged with errors or concealment. Obviously your mileage may vary, but it would appear that using the right tape and equipment, LP was less fragile than rumored. For the record, I did capture this to hard drive more than a decade ago and have had backup copies so I wasn't risking anything further by letting the tape sit on a shelf . I was just curious if I could still recapture from it w/o errors this far down the road. So likely the biggest downside to LP is that if a spot on the tape DOES flake, it'll hit more frames.

[Richard_G]

It will also depend on what you are using to play the tapes back. If the camcorder that the footage was shot on is still working and that is used, decent tapes, stored correctly, should be fine. It's more when you try to play the tapes back on a different machine that problems are likely to show up. As I have more than one camcorder, I mark the tapes to show which one they were shot on.