MINI DV QUESTION

[lilfried12]

If I record video on a mini dv tape and then capture it to my computer, will I be able to use the tape again (including capturing it back to my computer)? Thanks.

[festmaster]

Yes, you can but most people will recommend that you don't reuse Mini DV tapes. It is not because the quality degrades, but because DVD authoring programs compress your original video and it is nice to be able to keep a copy of your original source in its uncompressed state for any future editing. Since a DV tape can take up over 10GB of hard drive space, the best archive format to date is the tape. $5 tapes are more expensive than DVD-R's, but much cheaper than external hard drives.

[redwudz]

Yes, as many times as you want until the tape wears out. It's more of a transfer than a capture as a exact copy of the tape is transfered though the FireWire cable to the PC hard drive. I use WinDV for that.

And welcome to our forums.