What is a Mini-Dv?

Question

Are they tapes or memory chip or what? I want a video camera that I can upload videos on to my laptop and I found one that is a mini-dv video camera and I look at the picture and I saw the side of the camera and it said "tape enject". So what is it?

Answer 1

Many (not all) miniDV tape based camcorders also have a memory card so you can take and store still pictures... and the miniDV tape is used to store video.

Answer 2

Mini-DV is a tape.  It's used to store digital data.  

They hold a LOT of information, so that's a big plus.  It's still digital format, too.

Answer 3

DV and MiniDV are video formats that use magnetic tape as their recording medium.  It's a format that uses very little compression so it's good for editing and generally gives the best quality.  The downside is that it takes up a lot of space on your PC's disk.

MiniDV camcorders transfer video via firewire rather than USB.  If your laptop doesn't have a firewire port you'll need to add one.  PCMCIA cards are cheap, but the newer PCI Express cards are about twice the price.