Broadcast Quality Backups of Tapes

[davidblumenfeld]

I'm shooting a little documentary (on PAL) for a client and want to make (broadcast quality) back-ups of everything I'm shooting for them. My question is what is the best method of backing tapes up? Should we spend the $$ and back-up on Beta SP tapes or can I go from the original mini-DV to another mini-DV without any loss in quality? Any suggestions? THANKS!

[Jive]

A digital transfer (e.g. minidv-minidv) is a bit-for-bit copy of the original. *There are no differences, there is no loss in quality.

Even if you were to backup to BetaSP or any other media using an analogue transfer method, you'd lose a generation, and thus image quality would suffer regardless of whether or not the backup media is of higher quality.

[davidblumenfeld]

Thanks for the answer! Can I then go from my camera to another dv camera without losing anything? My friend has a sony pd-170...

[Mike_Donis]

You can indeed - as long as it's connected through a firewire, there will be absolutely no loss of quality whatsoever.

[Bill_Bolton]

One thing to consider: make sure your backup tapes are the same brand/type as you shoot with. You want to avoid contamination of the wet/dry lubes.

[Mike_Donis]

True!