Archiving old DV tapes to new ones without dubbing

Marlin said:

I'v completed capturing a a few DV tapes to FCP and is a time consuming task, since most tapes have so many time code breaks and I have many more to go. I don't want to sit thru dubbing all this to new tape and then capture. My question is?

The format is now SD not DV can I output to tape and use the new tape as my new archived tape.

Thanks so much.

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As long as you are using firewire there is no generation loss between copies. So, if you captured your DV tapes into FCP via FW and then took those captured clips and recorded them back to new DV tapes via FW both tapes will have the same image quality.


Lethal

Marlin said:

The format is now SD not DV

Click to expand...

Huh? SD isn't a video format or codec. If you originally recorded DV footage to a DV tape, then you have DV. If you capture that in FCP as DV (NTSC or PAL), you'll still have DV. If you capture DV footage in iMovie, you'll still have DV, albeit a slightly different DV codec than what FCE or FCP uses.

By the way, DV is just one of many SD (standard definition) video formats.

-DH

If your time code breaks are causing problems, you could

1) Use FCP's "Capture Now" to import the whole tape, trim the ends, and re-export, or

2) If you only want a second set of tapes, you could use a 4pin-to-4pin FireWire cable to remove timecode errors. Simply play back on one dcek/camera and record on another, effecting a lossless digital transfer. You can use an adapter to change a 4-to-6 into a 4-to-4. This avoids any sort of import/export labor or computer usage, and you might not have to mess with any settings (though I've never actually done this; make sure to verify the results of your process).