Compression loss in FCP?

Hi folks,

I'm shooting DV. Due to the unpredictable nature of the subject matter [field science, wildlife, etc.] I don't have a lot of control over the content that ends up on each of my tapes. This makes for tedious, detailed logging to avoid forgetting where everything is, & time consuming capture of little bits from numerous sources.

I'm wondering about the compression involved in capturing to FCP [Quicktime] from digital tape. Is it lossy? If I capture my raw footage, organize the clips in projects by subject, then output back to tape for archiving am I going to see noticable degradation when I re-capture again? And if not, is there a way to preserve clip identity on the tape now that the "DV Start/Stop Detect" will be gone? With markers, maybe?

Thanks for the help!

You will not lose any quality if you output to tape at full quality.
Why don't you save your original tape and use a blank one for your final project??
That way you always have the original source video and your final product on different tapes. $3.00 per tape is a small price to pay for reliable backup.
:)

Good idea about keeping the original tapes, thanks!

So outputting to tape at full quality doesn't result in degradation, but if I recapture this new tape later, will I lose any quality bringing it back in? My understanding is that there is a 5:1 compression that occurs when you capture DV into Quicktime via FCP, but that number is somehow misleading apparently??

Send it back to the tape at full quality. You will not lose any quality.

Thanks for the help!