Clean Copies, One Generation to the Next
Generation loss may well be the video editor's worst enemy. Here are some tips on how you can avoid its evils, regardless of the format you're shooting with.One of the most compelling claims that people make for digital video is no generation loss when you make copies. This means the 9th level copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy is 100% as good as the 1st generation original. This claim of digital superiority is just a tad overrated, (see Digital's Dirty Secrets sidebar); but there's no denying that traditional analog video markedly decays from parent to child to grandchild. In the worlds of VHS and 8mm, generation loss is heartbreakingly fast.
How fast? Your critical eye can see that your second generation edit master is not quite as sharp and clean as your camera original. Even your mom can tell that the 3rd generation copy you sent her doesn't equal what she's used to watching on her satellite TV system. Anything 4th generation or later is irritatingly bad.
Like death and taxes, analog generation loss is universal. But it is possible to postpone or partly avoid video degeneration. We'll show you how to protect picture quality from one tape level to the next. First, let's take a look at why video copies degenerate in the first …
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