How do I transfer dv camera footage to video / a vhs tape?

Hi there, a bit stuck, was told if I have lots of dv footage some 6 hours worth that I wish to edit the best thing is to load it onto a video tape rather than wear out the dv tape and camcorder by playing over and over again. I have a panasonic nv gs-120 there is a socket that says 'dv out' on the camera but where would I plug it into the back of the video recorder any ideas what sort of lead I need? Also someone said with this procedure to make sure that 'time codec' was on - what on the dv camera or video player? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[redsox_mark]

How are you planning to edit? VHS is very low quality; best if you can avoid that. If you want to copy from a DV camcorder to VHS you can't use the DV-out, you have to use the video outputs, and connect these to the video inputs on the VCR. (Usually a yellow phono cable for video, red/white for audio).

By "time codec" they meant "time based corrector", this is a function of the VCR, to help with the quality of the recording.

If you have a PC, then editing on the PC and creating a DVD is a nicer solution.

Hi, yes I was going to edit the dv footage on a mac but transfer it to vhs so that I can scan/browse through it easily without messing the camera up. Could you explain by what you mean by using the video outs? I don't understand. I have the cables you talk about but can't see how they would connect to my dv camera?

[rickyt]

Videos dont have the required DV [ilink] socket to allow a direct connection to capture the DV signal to transfer .Many new recorders have . My Lite-on HDD/DVD recorder allows this , so I can record directly to the hard drive or DVD disk from my camcorder . I dont in any case as I use a firewire card and edit on the Pc before writing to disk .Another option as pointed out is to use A/V lead . My Panasonic NV-GS11 as well as having DV out ,also has A/V out . This A/V can be linked directly to a home DVD recorder [Panasonic ES10/20 for instance] or a video recorder with the Yellow/White/Red phono sockets . Even if your recorder doesn't have these sockets , you can buy an adapter that plugs into a scart socket . This adapter has the yellow/red/white phonos and sometimes a SVHS socket and this will allow you to capture onto VHS tape . Remember the quality will be no where near as good as DV but is a second best .hth

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by heavenlychoirs

Hi, yes I was going to edit the dv footage on a mac but transfer it to vhs so that I can scan/browse through it easily without messing the camera up. Could you explain by what you mean by using the video outs? I don't understand. I have the cables you talk about but can't see how they would connect to my dv camera?

You should have an AV cable that came with your camcorder; it's the same cable you would use to connect it to a TV. On the camcorder end it has a mini-jack connector; on the other end the 3 phono cables. Your camcorder also has S-video, so you could use S-video if the VCR supports it.

So it sounds like you want to dump the video to VHS just for scanning/browsing purposes, to decide what to capture? Could you not just capture all the video and do the scanning on the PC? You'll need a decent size hard drive of course, but they are cheap.

Hey! Thanks ever so much for that. I am clearer now as to what to do. I will get a new lead. Thanks for the advice