This results in quality loss. Results in quality loss. You can use them for editing just like a regular camcorder. Kiss your quality good-bye when you do that. You can connect with it to standalone device control equipment, or to device control equipment which interfaces with linear editing applications, like Video Director, now owned by Pinnacle Systems.
Results usually are quite good.
The combination of two lossy codecs can result in a loss of quality due to repeated transcoding. Two lossy codecs combined often equal one lousy codec. In real life, the loss involved in these steps is less severe than it sounds. One of the reasons is that the DV signal usually is very clean and free of noise. A clean signal lends itself better to compression than a noisy signal.