Need DVCAM tape master: use the DLT or rip the DVD
 

I need to remake the DVCAM master tape but the only sources I have are the DLT or the DVD that was pressed. So far I ripped one DVD and then used MPEG Streamclip to export a quicktime movie then put that in FCP and dubbed it back to a DVCAM tape. Can I get better quality if I used the DLT.

How would I go about going from the DLT back to making a DVCAM copy of the video? I'm thinking read the DLT in DVD Studio Pro, make an .img file and burn that and then rip it but then I'm back to doing what I'm doing now, ripping the dvd.

My boss still wants me to make a DVD-R of the DLT so I'm gonna go and read/burn a dvd from the DLT anyway.

Thanks in advance for any help

As far as I know the DLT tape contains the same data as on the DVD so no difference whichever way you go for that part of the process.
I think the quality of what you get back from either of those is going to depend on the quality of the mpeg-2 decoder, you may even do better playing out the DVD in a good player and capturing via component into say a DSR-45.

Depending on what you want to do with the vision and if it's only simple edits to go back to DVD then a native mpeg-2 editor such as Womble can bypass a decode -> encode pass and minimise the loss, in fact apart from where you apply FX no quality loss at all.