The disadvantages of physically editing tapes were many. Some broadcasters decreed that edited tapes could not be reused, in an era when the relatively high cost of the machines and tapes was balanced by the savings involved in being able to wipe and reuse the media. Others, such as the BBC, allowed reuse of spliced tape in certain circumstances as long as it conformed to strict criteria about the number of splices in a given duration, usually a maximum of five splices for every half hour. The process required great skill, and often resulted in edits that would roll (lose sync) and each edit required several minutes to perform, although this was also initially true of the electronic editing that came later.