best quality

[devdev]

silly question but i just want to transfer some video 8 camcorder tapes to my pc

would there be any advatage to first transferring them to mini dv?

thank you in advance

[pchan]

If you already have a DV camera and a PC with firewire, and do not a analog capture card, then just transfer to DV tape and to PC via firewire. Save on buying a analog capture card.

[devdev]

thanks

yes i do have a mini dvd cam

but would the quality be better that using an analogue to digital convertor?

[rsgars]

Actually if you can connect your video 8 cam to your mini dv cam and then the mini dv cam to the computer via firewire you don't have to transfer to mini dv tape, just use the dv cam as a passthrough from the video 8 cam to the computer.

[edDV]

thanks

yes i do have a mini dvd cam

but would the quality be better that using an analogue to digital convertor?

In this mode the MiniDV camcorder is acting as a NTSC (or PAL) decoder, an analogue to digital (DV) convertor and a DV stream to IEEE-1394 transfer device.

The quality is equal or better than most consumer capture cards. The only "limitation" is the choice of only DV format. I'm guessing you are PAL based on your spelling of analogue. In that case levels will perfectly match. NTSC users will need to correct black level -7.5% in the digital domain to compensate for NTSC setup.