Capture question.

[Caius]

All capture of vhs, super vhs, DV.... All without exception, there are losses right? Even if it's the best equipment in the world, even if it's NASA, it will always be better watching through the VCR. Right?

Or can some sort of capture be better than running straight from the best VCR ever made?

[Sharc]

Capturing involves sampling, means quantization in time and space (amplitude) which introduces quantization artefacts like quantization noise and spectral losses. Can be kept very low but it still exists.
Visual improvents are possible by post processing, but it's a lossy process in terms of exact replication of the source.

[dellsam34]

Except DV, HDV, DVCAM and D8 those are consumer digital tape formats and should be transferred without any loss via firewire.

[Sharc]

Agree.
The term "capture" is perhaps not very well defined (?) and is used very loosely in the analog and digital realm. Seems it is used for any transfer from a magnetic medium, independent of the format analog or digital.