Premier Pro 2.0, striping tapes

[packerboy 3]

Really my question has nothing to do with Premier Pro specifically, but I am going through the tutorials and something that is highly recommended is "striping" your tapes. This suggestion comes from a professional news video cameraman.

They suggest that when you use a brand new tape, you should put it in and w/ the lens cap on you should record the whole tape. This creates a seamless timeline on the tape that will be not be copied over and thus facilitates cleaner capture into the program.

Is this something people usually do? Can you do this with previously used tapes? My understanding is that once the timeline is applied to the tape, then just the audio/video is dubbed over and the timeline is there for the life of the tape.

If so, should I buy new tapes or is it really worth it?

Disclaimer: I haven't actually TRIED dumping to APP yet, but when I dumped entire tapes w/ Windows Movie Maker, the file structure of the scenes captured is quite erratic.. I think it split it up into points where I had removed the tape from the camera and put it back in, thus resetting the counter time on the tape.

Do I sound like I know what I am talking about at least?

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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~ Thomas Jefferson

[DSE 5]

Striping is dead if you're using DV, because of the capture tools. But...depacking tape is STILL a good idea, fast forwarding and rewinding tape.
DV generates new TC (on low cost cams) each time you turn on/off camcorder if it doesn't see the old TC that you were previously using.
In other words, if you stop the tape during record, rewind a bit, preview it, and play back past the end of the existing TC, then it will start new TC if you turn off the camcorder between shooting. Striping prevented that, except that the new TC is laid over the striped TC, and it *can* confuse your NLE system.