What is MiniDV and can I connect it to my computer?

Question

I am thinking of getting a digital video camera that records onto the MiniDV medium. What exactly is this - someone one described it to me as a digital, say, VCR tape - and if I connect my MiniDV camera to my computer could I upload the data to my hard drive?

Thanks

Answer 1

MiniDV tape is a magnetic digital format. Like a hard drive or flash memory, the digital information is stored as zeros or ones - not like VHS tapes which store video as an analog signal (even though miniDV happens to be tape, it does not store analog information).

You can connect any miniDV tape based camcorder to your computer if your computer has a firewire400 port. If it does not have a firewire port, they are typically easy (and cheap) to add if your computer has available expansion slots. Since we don't know what computer you have, it is impossible to know for sure. Apple Macintosh computers have had firewire ports as standard for nearly ten years (the new MacBook Air is an exception). Transferring using USB will not work (if you want to import DV video from the tape).

The advantage to using miniDV tape is the format stored to the tape - DV (or HDV if a high definition camcorder) compresses the digital video data much less than other consumer storage methods (typically very highly compressed MPEG2, MP4 or AVCHD formats).

Video compression = discarded video data = reduced video quality... Best is to use least amount of compression in the video capture step and save compressing for the things you control in downstream steps when you are done editing.