L. Magyar wrote on Wed, 26 October 2005 14:45 |
Hi all- This is my first post here on the forum. A recent discussion came up in a production class I am in and I wonder if I could get some opinions? The question asked: Digital audio tape has all of the advantages except- a. They can be readily available for playback b. The tape can be used over and over again c. Digital audio tape can be easily edited d. All of the above The instructor (who also wrote the test), asserts that the answer is c- Assuming that the question is based on DAT tape, where does everyone stand? My argument is this- Answer a, unless we are talking time-code DAT there is no solid way to quickly pull up material from multiple areas of the tape, ala sampler or audio compact disk. Answer b, oxide shedding anyone? Yes, a DAT or SVHS or Hi8 will last through all kinds of session use, but a studio can’t recycle the same the same digital tape over and over again. Answer c, Again- maybe if the DAT is time-coded- even then what are you going to do deck to deck editing? You could use the players digital outs to go into a computer and stay in the digital world ect- but that’s beyond the scope of the question (or the class). So wouldn't it be fair to say that the answer is d? If I’m being stupid or this is inappropriate for the forum just let me know, but any input would be appreciated! Thanks in Advance
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vernier, I don't know what rock you've been hiding under. DAT is still used like Tim said. It's not the popular media that it once was, but I still receive DAT's to master on occasion and it's no more obsolete than vinyl records are.
a. They can be readily available for playback.
Compared to what? You still have to FF and RW a DAT tape to get to audio in the middle of a program, with an HD-R and a location point its a simple matter of one button push and you are at the start of the audio. This is true with regard to puchasing tape, but not with the speed of locating, compared to hard disk.
b. The tape can be used over and over again
This is true. I've recorded over some DAT's at least 50 times. BTW, there is no shedding on DAT's, at least not that I'm aware of, or at this point in time.
c. Digital audio tape can be easily edited
While this is partially true, again compared to what? Some of the DAT's had jog/shuttle editing and although it's no where as comprehensive as jog/shuttle editing with a stand alone HD-R, you can write start, end and skip points and create TOC's that can be transferred straight to a glass master as P-Q codes. This data is written to a subcode track along with SMPTE or other timecode data. You can't do this with most analog, you have to dedicate an audio track to the stripe, old ADAT tape too. So DAT tape can be edited easier than some analog mediums, but not as good as hd editing. A DAT j/s editor with two decks is much more efficient at basic editing, (copy, paste, move, erase) than splicing annie tape and there is no degradation when pasting from one deck to the next.
BTW, I transferred several hundred gigs of DAT tape audio to 120 gig hard drives last year. DAT's that I've used over the years were 60m, 90m and 120m tapes and some other smaller and off standard length tapes to fit some program material specifically. 60m's were typically 2 hours 4 minutes. 90m were 3 hours 8 min. and the 120s were 4 hours and 16 minutes of 44.1k or 48k audio. Some of the DAT machines will run at 32k which doubles the time length on the DAT. Because FM radio maxes at around 15k frequency response output, 32k DAT's were used to broadcast long play programs. For example the 120m's at 32k would record and playback. 8 and a half hours and still play all of the freq's that FM can broadcast. Most of my masters were recorded to 60m's and I always made a second safe copy, I could get 2 to 3 cd's worth of back up cd projects on one DAT which held 1.3 gigs. Now that I've transferred them to 120 gigs using dual bay stand alone audio HD-R's, I can access 240 Gigs anywhere with just a couple of button pushes. To access the same amount of songs on the DAT's, I would have to load in and out of the tray 184 60m DAT tapes. Than I'd also have to FF to specific locations.
You have my permission to show my post to your instructor.