How many hours can the dvc 30 head take?

I am just curious to know if the head of the dvc30 lasts long because I also use it as a player for the things I record. Also to transfer video to the pc. I have 50 hours on it right now and I plan to clean it every 50 hours.

Page 85 of the owners manual says " replace the videro heads every 2,000 hours". Of course routine maintenance can go a long way to prolong your camcorder's life-span. I have 135 hours on mine and ran a tape head cleaner thru it at 50 hours when I saw some mosaics. I think I am going to get the heads professionally cleaned every 200 hours and only run a head clean tape when a problem develops. My long-term plans are to add a firestore hd to the cam and go to a tapeless workflow.

Regards,

Mark
natureflixs (http://www.natureflixs.com)

I have about 140 hours on my heads and i've only run a tape cleaner when I switch tape brands, maybe 3 times. I've only had one time where I had a little blip and that was because it was a tape I used 5 times. I also use my cam as a player. I'm not too worried as i figure by the time I have to start worring about head wear, i'll be on to a new camera. I figure in about 10 years at the rate i'm going. I wouldn't worry about it. The camera is there to use, use it. It's a good camera and built like a tank. You'll probably have a hard time finding minidv tapes before you have to worry about the heads.

I am just curious to know if the head of the dvc30 lasts long because I also use it as a player for the things I record. Also to transfer video to the pc. I have 50 hours on it right now and I plan to clean it every 50 hours.

Some of the things I do that I believe extend the life of the heads (whether it's true or not but it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling).

I take the camera in every sping and fall for a pro cleaning. I don't run cleaner tapes through the system as I feel some of these are abrasive to some degree. I also use a stand alone rewinder to rewind the tape to save on the motors.

I also plan on going to a FireStore solution (record directly to HDD) but that's more so to save on work flow than anything else. I'd still be backup the raw footage of my production work to tape for archiving. The DVC30 and Firestore solution will allow you to record to both tape and HDD simultaneously. There are various models of FireStore products but I think the FS-40 version (around $650) is all you really need as the pricier models do auto format conversions.. I don't think I need those. 40G HDD version should give you around what, 3 hours of recording?