In Premiere: export to tape from timeline or from movie file

[wetgate]

Do I get better quality exporting back to DV from the timeline or do I convert to a movie file and then export to tape?
Thanks

[holistic]

What are you trying to achieve here???

Any conversion (mpeg2 or the like) will result in a quality loss.

Technically 'print to tape' or recording back to the DV camera should result in no image degradation but i have read some DV codecs perform better that others at this. Worst being the M$ DV codec

[wetgate]

Well, I was just wondering if saving the timeline to an .avi movie file degrades the quality. I did notice that the movie I made (created on a Canon XL1S had a loss of quality when I tranferred it back to DV tape. I'm thinking that exporting to tape directly from the timeline would have less noise since it was one generation less than the movie file. And although technically there should be no loss, I've read that transferring files (like analog) DOES degrade the picture somewhat if done repeatedly. Any advice would be helpful.