Am I losing image quality when I do this?

[Ronny G]

I've been transferring some old TV shows on VHS video to DVD. I use my standalone DVD recorder. I then take that disc recording and demux using VOB Edit. Then, I use Cuttermaran to edit out the commercials. Then, I send the new VLC files to DVD Author GUI to add menus and create the final disc.

My question is: am I losing picture quality by doing this?

I know in the old days of video tape that this would be like a third or fourth generation copy and the picture would get worse with each generation.

Thanks for your help! Ron

[guns1inger]

No, you are not losing quality. When working with digital video, generation loss comes from re-encoding compressed video with another, lossy compression format. The process you are using is not re-encoding and therefore the data that goes in is the same as what comes out.

[Ronny G]

Thanks! That's good to know.

[SCDVD]

At the beginning of the process when you capture the video from VHS tape, you can insure the best quality video if you use a time base corrector. Tape is flexible and can also stretch. This tends to cause a type of distortion that can be quite visible and annoying in some cases. The older the tape, the more likely you are to have this type of distortion.