What is more important regarding quality of mini DV tape video capture?

[nwgal65]

Hello. My old Sony mini DV camcorder was stolen. I want to buy a used one so I can transfer many years of home videos (mostly mini DV tapes) to my hard drive to edit and then burn to DVD. Does the quality of the used camcorder matter here or is the "quality" already established from the footage years ago?

I believe my PC has a firewire port. Any recommendations for editing software if I do in fact have functioning firewire that will take care of the capture ? Novice here, thanks for any help.

[KarMa]

As long as you don't get any blocking errors in your ripped video, then it should be a 100% copy of the data on the tape. No matter the camera model used to transfer it to your computer. Should only really matter when you want to film something to begin with, then the video sensor and the optic quality matters. I've never done a DV transfer so can't help there.

[nwgal65]

Thank you. That's very helpful. I will get back online and shop around.

[jagabo]

Yes, the camcorder is just reading digital data off the tape and sending it down the firewire cable. As long as the camcorder is reading the tape correctly and the firewire port is working you should be able to get a perfect copy of what's on the tape.

[nwgal65]

Great! Thank you.

Any recommendations for software to help me edit it?