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Mini DV | Digital Videotape | DV Tape | MiniDV

Digital Video (DV) is a digital video format created by Sony, JVC, Panasonic and other video camera producers and launched in 1995, and, in its smaller tape form factor MiniDV, has since become a standard for home and semi-professional video production; it is sometimes used for professional purposes as well, such as filmmaking and electronic news gathering (ENG). The DV specification (originally known as the Blue Book, current official name IEC 61834) defines both thecodec and the tape format. Features include intraframe compression for uncomplicated editing, a standard interface for transfer to non-linear editing systems (IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire), and good video quality, especially compared to earlier consumer analog formats such as Video8,Hi8 and VHS-C. DV now enables filmmakers to produce movies inexpensively, and is strongly associated with independent film and citizen journalism[citation needed].

The high quality of DV images, especially when compared to Video8 and Hi8 which were vulnerable to an unacceptable amount of video dropouts and ”hits", prompted the acceptance by mainstream broadcasters of material shot on DV. The low costs of DV equipment and their ease of use put such cameras in the hands of a new breed of videojournalists. Programs such as TLC’s Trauma: Life in the E.R. and ABC News’ Hopkins: 24/7 were shot on DV. CNN’s Anderson Cooper is perhaps the best known of the generation of reporter/videographers who began their professional careers shooting their own stories.

There have been some variants on the DV standard, most notably Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic'sDVCPRO formats targeted at professional use. Sony's consumer Digital8 format is another variant, which is similar to DV but recorded on Hi8 tape. Other formats such as DVCPRO50 utilize DV25 encoders running in parallel.

MiniDV tapes can also be used to record a high-definition format called HDV in cameras designed for this codec, which differs significantly from DV on a technical level as it uses MPEG-2 compression. MPEG-2 is more efficient than the compression used in DV, in large part due to inter-frame/temporal compression.[1] This allows for higher resolution at bitrates similar to DV. On the other hand, the use of inter-frame compression can cause motion artifacts and complications in editing.[2] Nonetheless, HDV is being widely adopted for both consumer and professional purposes and is supported by many editing applications using either the native HDV format or intermediary editing codecs.

MiniDV/DVC vs. Digital8

Contrary to popular perception, the Digital8 format is not technically inferior to miniDV -- both are identical at the bitstream level. From a user standpoint, Digital8 is DV (or rather, equivalent to and compatible with consumer miniDV.) At an application level (for example, in a 1394/Firewire link), a Digital8 camcorder appears and behaves exactly like a Mini DV camcorder.

Digital8 and Mini DV use different, non-interchangeable cassette media, with Digital8 cassettes being the physically larger of the two. The two formats may also use different media formulations: Digital8 can use metal-particle or metal-evaporated media, while miniDV is based solely on metal-evaporated media. The maximum recording time for Digital8 and MiniDV is 135 minutes and 130 minutes, respectively, using D-90 and DVM-85 tapes. These extra-thin, extra-long tapes are rare and expensive. [[1]] [[2]] [[3]]

In addition, Digital8 uses tape at 29mm per second; more like the higher-end DVCAM (28mm/s) and DVCPRO (34mm/s). MiniDV uses tape at 19mm/s. According to Sony's press release of January 7, 1999, for the MiniDV format one frame is recorded onto 10.0 tracks, with the Digital8 format one frame's worth of information is recorded vertically onto 25 tracks. The use of this recording method enables digital images to be recorded on a Hi8 tape.

Another area Digital8 cameras excelled over the MiniDV cameras is their optical zoom. Digital8 cameras range from 15x and 25x optical zoom while MiniDV cameras of the same year and market segment were between 10x and 12x, with some topping out at 15x. This changed in the following years as some MiniDV cameras such as the DCR-HC38 have an optical zoom of 40X.