What does a "head-cleaning tape" do and how do I use it?
One of the things you want to consider buying to keep in your camera case is a head cleaning tape. These are little tapes the same size as the cassette if your shooting in a mini DV environment or even a HDV environment and use them when ever the heads get dirty. Now there's kind of a catch 22 there. People will say, "how often do I clean the heads?" and really the only correct answer for that is often as they get dirty. And I know that probably doesn't help you in terms of you wish I could say 40 hours, or 50 hours or a million hours but really anytime you use a head cleaning tape they're a little bit abrasive on the heads and they tend to wear the heads down. So we don't recommend you use them on a regular basis. I would say before a big event you might want to pop one in or obviously if you've seen any kind of issues in terms of the video itself breaking up or video not being recorded well, you might want to pop one in. Caution though they really should not run for more than about 10 seconds at a time as I mentioned they're a little bit abrasive but having one in your bag definitely can save the day especially if you're on vacation somewhere and a head gets what we call a clog and you don't get a video at all. So it's always better to have one then not have them but use it sparingly. Use it on a regular basis but not all the time.
