Can I "copy" the video from my Sony TRV-530?

[Airjrdn]

I don't necessarily want to capture it...I want to copy it...bit by bit. I know there are tools out there to use it as a tape backup, and since everything is stored digitally, shouldn't I be able to simply "copy" the data from the tape to my HD , producing a file I could then convert to an .avi? I'm thinking this would negate the loss of quality inherent w/capturing.

Does this sound reasonable, or am I totally off here?

[Jester700]

If you capture it, it IS a copy. There is no changing of the data in a straight DV capture.

[Airjrdn]

I'm comparing it to something along these lines: http://dvbackup.sourceforge.net/

So capturing to a lossless format would produce the same results as copying it from the tape in digital form (bit by bit), then converting that to a lossless video format?

[MpegEncoder]

DV is a compressed format. So saving it uncompressed would only waste space.

[daamon]

Hi Airjrdn,

Use something like WinDV or DVIO or VirtualDub to copy (transfer) from your DV cam to DV AVI.