Recording on MiniDV tape twice?

[cactusjack310]

I want to record all my footage from my camera into my computer through the firewire card, and then edit it. If I send the edited footage back to my camera and record it over the original footage will I loose any quality? Also, does anyone know how many times can I record over a miniDV tape before I start having drop-outs?

[cooel]

Mini DV tape is like all video tape, if you record over something the machine will erase the tape fully as it goes. There should be no loss of quality if your machine is in good clean condition. However, I would not recomend you record over your original material in case there is a problem somewhere with the process. Best to use a new tape, and if this is OK, then use the old tape for your next copy. With good quality video tapes you should be able to re-use them about 100 times without dropouts, but in the case of Mini DV format, dropouts will look different, ie you should get pixelation on bad segments. I have never yet reached this stage.

[garryheather]

... you might lose some quality if your editor compresses the video and / or audio, however. I doubt this will be the case if your software supports native DV capture, but make sure it does or you have the option to run "uncompressed".

In other words, if your software or capture device say converts it to MPEG for some reason, it's throwing data away.

Note to DVCAM users - this is a compressed video format and subsequent edits and the like will reduce the quality slightly, but it takes many generations to achieve this before it starts noticably falling apart. Don't get DV and DVCAM confused !

[energy80s]

DVcam is actually a more professional version of MiniDV. Picture quality is slightly better from DVcam sources (ie. Sony PD150s) but it isn't backwards compatible with MiniDV. If you have the choice of shooting in MiniDV or DVcam, always use the DVcam option.

[cactusjack310]

O.K. Thanks for the input guys!