I have lots of dv tapes that are full and I have no time to edit them at the minute.

Which is the best way to back them up onto dvd for editing later so I dont loose any quality. Thanks

[redsox_mark]

Best thing would be just to hold on to the tapes until you are ready to edit...

If you have enough HDD space you can capture the footage in their original DV-avi format (no loss of quality) to HDD and edit them later.

If you want to backup the original DV-AVI video to DVD you can do that, create a Data DVD and simply copy the files to the DVD. But you will have to make sure that no single clip is greater than 4.7 GB (about 20 minutes).

[senu]

As Mark says the tapes are really the best backups as long as you keep them carefully
It would be uneconomical to store them on HDD given how much they would gobble up in space.
Even edited DV AVI files can be rerecorded to tape for archiving
DVDs can also be fickle unless you get good media, burn them at nice low speeds handle and store them very very carefully
Incidentally I store some "precious" DVDs as ISO images on HDD which i treat like the "Crown Jewels"
HDD is cheap at about £70 for 320Gb but tapes are still way ahead as VFM in the archiving dept

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by senu

HDD is cheap at about £70 for 320Gb but tapes are still way ahead as VFM in the archiving dept

Totally agree. When you can get 10 Sony miniDV tapes for £10.75 Here (that's about 15p per Gb compared to 22p per Gb for the HDD mentioned by senu) there really is no need IMO to reuse the tapes.

Mark.