CVA is the longest established video tape recycling company in the UK, servicing numerous production companies, facilities houses and overseas television broadcasters.
Think CVA for videotape recycling.
A used tape is not a safe tape. Just one use of a new tape could be enough to damage it, and you’ll only know once you record over it.
Our recycled tapes are inspected by lasers for physical defects, scratches and creases, so with a recycled tape, you’ll always know before you use it that it’s defect free.
The amount of phytoplankton – tiny marine plants – in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.
Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say the decline appears to be linked to rising water temperatures.
They made their finding by looking at records of the transparency of sea water, which is affected by the plants.
The decline – about 1% per year – could be ecologically significant as plankton sit at the base of marine food chains.
This is the first study to attempt a comprehensive global look at plankton changes over such a long time scale.
“What we think is happening is that the oceans are becoming more stratified as the water warms,” said research leader Daniel Boyce from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The recycling process doesn’t always have to be about re-using your old tapes, or rejuvenating them for re-use. It can also be about reinvigorating your archive tapes, giving them a spruce up, and just taking the time to check they are not in deterioration.
Evaluation Without Erasure
How do you check the quality of your archive tapes? How can you be sure they are not going to pot? The obvious thing to do is pop them in a player and make sure they are okay. This also stops them getting too loose on their reels of course.
But unless you sit and watch the entire tape diligently, you’ll never be one hundred per cent sure it’s defect free. Plus, running it through a VTR risks adding further dirt to the tape surface – and you also run the the risk of damaging the tape on the pinchers, rollers and heads.
It’s not the ideal solution.
This is where Tape Evaluators come in to their own. They automate the whole process, with the added benefit of actually polishing and cleaning the surface of the tape, thus removing any build up of dirt.
The Mechanics Of Evaluation
Let’s inspect a standard 32 minute Digital Betacam. It’s been sat on the shelf, gathering dust, roundly ignored or forgotten. It slips into the Evaluator, which feeds the tape through the mechanisms.
Here we find the sapphire burnisher posts, which clear away the dirt gently, before moving over the vacuum posts which pull away any other dirt onto specially designed cleaning tissues.
That should be enough, but it doesn’t stop there. Next the tape passes over a series of optical scanners, which physically survey the surface of the tape for any damage or defect. They report on the length and character of anything they find, so you know the EXACT condition of the tape.
But that’s not all – when the tape is ejected, a report is printed for you. If the newly clean tape is defect free, this report tells you so, and it also gives you a record of the date the tape was checked. If the tape does happen to be defective, it also reports on the nature and length of the damage.
As an added bonus, it gives you the exact duration of the tape, to the nearest second. This highlights some fun anomalies. A sixty minute Betacam for example, often has up to eight minutes of extra tape.
It Makes Sense
The evaluation process can only improve the efficiency and accuracy of your archiving. It’s good for your tapes, and it’s good for your records. It’s even good for your equipment, because it prevents the build up of dirt on your playback heads.
Recycling your tapes is easy, great for the environment and even better for your budget. We’ll collect your tapes, sort them, recycle them and return them to you. You won’t need to worry about a thing.
And you can rest easy in the knowledge that by recycling your tapes for your own re-use, you are kicking your carbon footprint in to dust.
What’s more, you’ll be saving significant money in the meantime.
Recycle tape. It’s easy.
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