How do MiniDV's work?

Question

My fellow camcorder-addicts, im new to this, but am really saving up for the Canon HV30 (1000$ Dollar camcorder) because most camcorder's at best buy are 200-700$, which is so much more reasonable, but all those small priced camera's are in dvd format, and if i can't edit my footage, then i just won't buy the camcorder at all.

But the canon HV30 is in MiniDV format, and i was wondering how to use this format to get the footage off a MiniDv onto my computer's editing program, and how MiniDV's work inside the camcorder too.

Anybody got any anwsers?

Answer 1

If you have a mini dv (cassette) camcorder….

Your dv camcorder needs a firewire connection (ieee 1394) in order to download video, your PC probably did not come with a firewire port, so you will have to buy one and install it, since most computers (except possibly brand new) don't come with a firewire port, your camcorder did not come with a firewire cord so you have to purchase a cord too. Your camcorder did come with a USB cord and that is used for downloading stills from your camcorder. Make sure your camera is in playback mode.

Answer 2

The Canon HV30 is a great camcorder.

ALL miniDV tape based camcorders transfer video the same way - with a firewire cable. USB will not work. Firewire, IEEE1394a, i.Link and DV are all the same thing.

Your computer needs to have a firewire port. You did not tell us what kind of computer you have so we don't know if you already have one or if you need to install one - or if you computer can even add one.

As to how miniDV tape camcorders work... the simple answer is that the light comes in the lens and hits the imaging chip. The imaging chip converts the information into electrical data that the rest of the electronics in the camcorder work with... this is the same for ALL camcorders but for miniDV tape, the electronics produce DV or HDV (depending on which mode you have the camcorder set) and the digital information is written to the digital tape. The digital tape is not much different than a hard drive - that is, metal oxides are deposited on a surface - and the digital data in the form of zeros and ones - or "on/off" is recorded to the storage media. The difference is that consumer HDD camera's electronics write using a very highly compressed MPEG2 format compared to a very low compression DV used by miniDV tape... or very highly compressed AVCHD format compared to a much less compressed HDV format.

In the video world, video data compression = discarded data = reduced video quality.

The goal is to start with the best available video quality you can afford, then AFTER editing, you control the compression for the audience you are providing the video to (YouTube or Vimeo or HDTV... or whatever).

DVD based camcorders apply the most compression and editing their video can be challenging (use a DVD ripper like HandBrake), but expect lowest video quality when compared to the other consumer camcorder storage media.

Answer 3

Im just saying you CAN edit video on a DVD!