Does it matter if you use minidv tapes?

Question

I want to get a Canon HV20. I was wondering if it matters what type of tapes you use. Will it look the smae if I record on a normal minidv tape or a HDmini dv tape?

Answer 1

Hello, this decision all depends on how good you want the quality to be. If you are looking to go after the camera full capability of HD I would go with the HD mini- dv tapes due to the fact that normal mini-dv tapes usually have a lot of grain when recording. The HD mini-dv tapes on the other hand will give you a somewhat better quality video with less grain, I am not saying there will not be none at all but you are most likely to see some grain even when recording on hd mini-dv tapes but the video quality will look better then on a normal mini-dv tape. Again it all depends on what you are going to shoot.

Answer 2

HD recordings use a compression which works by throwing away most of the frames and keeping a few "real" frames, called I-frames.  The rest of the frames are made up from data about what's changed since the last I-frame and what's going to change at the next one.  This means that you have to work with several frames at a time in order for the video to be usable.  This is called a Group Of Pictures or GOP and is about half a second of video.  

Now, consider what happens if there's a problem with the tape.  With MiniDV, the worst that can happen is that you lose a frame - with HD you'll lose the entire GOP.  To reduce the likelihood of this happening, HD tapes are made to a higher mechanical standard, but they're otherwise identical.

There's no difference in the video quality, so yes, it'll look the same.  Not grainy!  If you haven't got a HD tape you can use a MiniDV and you'll probably get away with it.