Hello,

I have Sony Vegas 6.0 Movie Studio and DVD. As you can tell from my username I'm new to the editing game. I have all the footage that I want to dump on mini dv tapes. I will be using a firewire to connect the camera to my pc. What I want to know is if the quality of the footage will be affected if I use a different camera. I shot the footage in progressive on a dvx100 and I can campture the footage using this camera or using my consumer handycam Sony DCR-HC32/HC42. Will the quality of the footage be affected if I use a lower-grade camera? Any help and advice you can share with me would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Newbie or not, you clearly know what you're doing

The quality is in the data that is recorded to the MiniDV tape. Unless there's actually a faulty mechanism or "dirty" tape heads (in which case you'll get nothing or some frames dropped) there will be absolutely no difference in quality. In fact its a good idea to use an old camera for the express purpose of reviewing/capturing in order to reduce wear on the mechanism on your "main" camera. I recently bought a non-working (as in the sensor had broken so it couldn't film) camera on eBay for £13 for this purpose. It had the bonus of DV-in so I can record back to tape as well.

BTW it may be stating the obvious, but MiniDV tapes recorded in HDV will NOT play back on SD models.

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Tim

Thanks Tim for the help and the reply, that clears up a lot