Digital to Analog to Digital

[John Richards]

Another stupid question - due to a limitation on airline luggage I will be unable to take my nice shiny XL1s on holiday with me so I've aquired an ancient JVC GR-DV1 (small, cheap and digital ! ) but note that despite being DV it has only some form of analog out. I gather that I might be able to play the tapes through my XL1s but that the chances are that differences in head alignment and the age of the DV1 might stop this, the other option seems to be a video capture card. My question is whether the conversion to analog in the camera, transfer and reconversion to digital is going to degrade the picture quality excessively?
I don't expect it to approah XL1 standard but hope it will be better the video8.
Any comments please

[Rob Lohman]

If you have an XL1S you can also use it to conver the signal to
digital if it doesn't read the tape. Use an analog cable connection
(s-video would be better than composite if the jvc has that) from
the jvc to the XL1S and set it to vcr mode and then pause rec
to see the incoming feed. You can then hit record on XL1S and
play on the jvc to record it. Then capture as usual.

Keep in mind that these recording controls are on the top handle,
not the normal record button. Also you would want to wire audio
(which you may need to switch to line in to not record the mic!).

Then capture as normal. It will degrade the signal ofcourse, but
not too much if you keep the cable short and high quality.

[John Richards]

Thanks Rob- amazingly the tape plays O.K. in the XL1s though it's something I'd rather not do so when the batteries have recharged I'll try an svideo transfer to check the quality
John