Hi there, im novice in this, but want to see few options on transfering dv to either SVHS or CD-ROM, if i transfer to 1st, i would probably loose some quality I guess, what about CD-ROM, transferring via CDRW, what i should be expecting from this? Also after editing in my laptop, can i directly trasfer it to cdrom or SVHS? Thanx, Al

-- al hakimov (alhakimov@yahoo.com), July 24, 2001

Answers

You can transfer your DV footage to S-VHS by simply plugging your camcorder to a S-VHS VCR. Yes, you will lose quality, although not much. But the most important disadvantage is that you convert digital source into analog form and then store it on a cassette which is subject to degrade with time. Thus it is better to keep your DV footage on a digital carrier sush as CD-R. If you burn your raw DV source onto a CD-R, you'll be able to fit only about 3min of video. That's why you need to convert it to one of the formats supported by your software, such as QuickTime, RealVideo, etc. Best quality can be achieved when encoding in the MPEG2 format, same being used for video on DVDs. You can hold up to 20min of video on one CD-R. Find out if your DV editing software can export to MPEG2, or ask somebody for advice on that. Note that after you convert your DV source to MPEG2, you can no longer edit it. So if you want to be able to edit your footage in the future, you must still keep your source (on a miniDV cassette or elsewise)

-- Sasz Kolomon (skolomon@yahoo.com), August 09, 2001.