Sony MiniDV Cleaning Cassette

For the first time in my Sony video camera's 4.5 year life, I get the "dirty head" notice ON MY SECOND DAY OF MY PARIS TRIP (even with annual pro-cleaning)! And alas, with no cleaning cassette with me and no time to hunt for one, I have to leave it in the hotel room. Thankfully, my digital camera takes movies too (but not quite as good as the video camera), but that's another story.

So I search the internet and the Sony cleaner had the best reviews. They're not wrong, so I don't need to add one more. But after seeing a few questions about how many times you can use this thing, I'd thought I'd try to clarify.

Instructions included say (after inserting cassette into the camera of course):

-Press PLAY or START button. Run for 10 seconds. Press STOP.
-Remove cassette cleaner without rewinding it. Put a regular cassette in to check if the heads are clean.
-If not, run the cleaner again. They suggest to run it NO MORE than five times consecutively (again, 10 seconds at a time without rewinding the tape)

My camera says there's 11 (eleven) minutes of tape in the cassette, so if that's accurate (I don't know if it is because I don't want to forward/rewind the tape), you'll get about six 10-second cleanings a minute, so 66 cleanings for one pass of the entire tape. It says you can rewind and use again ONCE, so about 132 cleanings total. Again, that's if there's actually 11 minutes of cleaning tape on the cassette and you let it run for exactly 10 seconds a shot.

Me being the skeptic, if I get five-10 cleanings before the tape ends, that's 10-20 total, that's still a good deal.

So in my estimation, you'll get between 10-132 cleanings from one cassette (lol, how's that for broad range). So far, I've gotten two with plenty of tape to spare.

Hope this helps.

Although tape may seem to be dead or dying with the advent of flash and hard drive memory cameras and systems. The use of DV tape is still alive and well and still used in the professional industry. This Sony head cleaner cassette is an asset. And is best with Sony camcorders, DV player/recorders and other camcorders. We use this cleaner when tapes have been sitting for some time and could cause head clogs from the oxide flaking off. So Keep one on hand to be prepared. Sony makes a great product.

Only Sony products that I only trust to work for my 3 video cameras and nothing else for the past 5 years.

This dry MiniDV format tape head cleaner works well with my Canon Optura 400. I'd recommend this cleaner for MiniDV cam users experiencing "digital snow", intermittent picture/sound dropouts, and other problems related to dirty heads. Make sure to review the instructions before using the cleaning tape!

Chose not to use anything but a Sony cleaner on my Sony heads. Took a couple attempts, but took care of dropped frames. Recommend having one of these in your camera bag at all times.