Re my post 15/11/05 about expected life span of recording heads -- I contacted Canons
tech. team and was informed that canon don't publish the info i required' Here's their
answer

Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding your Canon product.

Canon unfortunately does not publish the data you are asking about. We suggest you might find an answer by looking in a consumer or industrial magazine that review camcorders.

Regarding striping the tape, if your editing program can identify tape clips by their time stamp (most now can), it may not be necessary to do it. We suggest you ask this question to the maker of your editing program.