DV/DVD

[uno]

Can digital video be copied as many times as you wish without loss of quality? Some say it is not correct and after a number of copies there will be a loss.
I tried to copy a small AVI-file 20 times and then made a still picture which I enlarged and printed out. I could see no difference on the print.

[bugster]

Can digital video be copied as many times as you wish without loss of quality?

Yes. Its only digital data on some form of storage medium.

It would be a bummer if your bank account got screwed up due to 'quaity loss' when the data was copied from one place to another

[ZippyP.]

I tried to copy a small AVI-file 20 times and then made a still picture which I enlarged and printed out. I could see no difference on the print.

Ain't digital great?!

Simple copying will not change it in any way, every bit gets copied and the final copy is identical to the original.

Now if you change it into another format by encoding or compressing...well that's different. There is always some loss in quality when you encode, done correctly it can be hard to detect.

[Beavis]

Can digital video be copied as many times as you wish without loss of quality? Some say it is not correct and after a number of copies there will be a loss.

Depends on what you're talking about... if you keep copying the same video time after time from one camera to another, there's a chance that you might see some degradation- but this would be because from noise, etc. introduced from the recording heads, sub-par tapes, etc. and not because there would in theory be any loss due to the digital copying process.

This probably isn't something the average home guy would ever have to worry about, but making blanket statements about copying "as many times as you wish without loss of quality" is not necessarily true. There is such a thing as digital noise.