"Just a warning to those mixing different brands of Mini DV tapes: try to stick to only one brand. From my experience confirmed by others, Sony and, for instance Panasonic tapes used interchangeably cause gumming up of the camcorder heads, because they use different kind of lubricant. Sony is the only manufacturer, I believe, that uses wet lubricant while the most use a dry type. "
Having done a lot of research on this as my girlfriend was repeating the same FUD, which was also repeated to her from the kids at the media department at Univ. of Texas (who heard it from another guy, etc.), this is not true. Or at least not true anymore.
From what I dug up across the web and Usenet, Sony changed their tape formulation circa 1999 to address this. This "lubricant mixing" problem had some truth to it back in the day but is now relegated to more or less DV urban legend status. You can get the same "gumming up" to occur by mixing current Sony tape with pre-99 Sony tape.
Additionally, the only way to get the heads to gum up was to use a lot 10-20 minimum of one tape, and then switch.. if you have been mercenary and use a different brand of tape every couple tapes then the problem would not occur.
A lot of posts on the DV newsgroups and sites seem to confirm a lot of guys on all levels mixing tape brands without trouble.
Also this "problem" fails the modern day common sense test. If this were still a problem, and even if it were a widespread problem back then, keep in mind the little DV hobbyist community is small and puny statistically compared to the general consumer population. With the tens of thousands of DV cameras sold worldwide, and the however many thousands of different brands of tape sold worldwide, if this were a statistically significant problem it would present itself in epidemic fashion. It would be impossible to hide, and Consumer Reports et al. would be drooling all over it.
Summary: Tape mixing problems are neither reality nor anything to worry about in the modern day, do not pay any attention to it. Professionals dont so neither should you.
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