Preserving image data as much as possible

[tonewheels]

Hello.
I've been reading several topics of interest but still am not clear about a few things. There are often conflicting opinions and changes of mind as you read though a topic.

I'd like to get a few hard facts if possible but I'll ask one thing at a time.

When transferring PAL DV video from a camcorder to the computer via firewire, I feel that you should end up with a clone of the original, unaltered in any way. Is this what happens or does using different DV codecs affect this 'transfer only' operation in any way? Can the codecs settings affect anything or is the data just copied exactly?

Please forget about encoding new video to DV or decoding video, I'm just talking about transferring from a digital8 camcorder.

Thanks for your help.

[jagabo]

When transferring PAL DV video from a camcorder to the computer via firewire, I feel that you should end up with a clone of the original, unaltered in any way.

That is correct. Unless you are performing an on-the-fly conversion to MPEG or something.

Is this what happens or does using different DV codecs affect this 'transfer only' operation in any way? Can the codecs settings affect anything or is the data just copied exactly?

The codecs are for viewing the video as it is being copied from the camcorder to the computer. Or for working with the DV later.

[tonewheels]

Thanks very much jagabo, that clears that up for me.