Anyone sure about this?

If I tape with a DV SP format camera and then transfer to a DVCAM format deck via firewire, do I really have a DVCAM format now? Are there tracking or other problems if i do this?
I realize that a transfer from one format to another if fine but since both signals are so alike, I'm wondering if this is legit..

The last time I tried this (admittedly over 8 years ago), you COULDN'T play DV material out over FW to a DVCam device for recording as the DVCam device (in my case a Sony DSR200 camera w. VTR "mode") "saw" the unlocked audio and stopped recording.

Playing out from an NLE is altogether different, unless I'm mistaken. I've worked exclusively in DVCam over DV for so long now I can't say I've tried to "print back" to DVCam any DV sourced material in a LONG time.

I've transferred DV tapes to DVCAM before, from one deck to another, via firewire. No problems. The DVCAM version would be DVCAM, since that deck only recorded DVCAM. But there's not going to be any difference in quality. My reason for doing it was because the guy who had shot the DV tapes was an amateur and had timecode breaks everyplace. I can't think of any other reason to do that, except maybe to consolidate several smaller tapes onto a 3 hour cassette or something like that. I used two DSR1800 decks for that process. They will play DV but only record DVCAM.

If you should get an issue with the deck stopping due to unlocked audio, just capturing in to the computer over firewire and then out via the same to a deck recording in DVCAM will do the trick.

The main difference between the formats is that the tape runs through a little faster when recording to DVCAM, hence the shorter period of time that the same tape will last for.