What is uncompressed digital video?

Question

Ok, so an uncompressed digital photo is a RAW, a TIFF, or a PNG, for example. What's the file format for an uncompressed digital video file? I hear uncompressed video is about 500 MB/s; how do people handle it? What kinds of cameras record uncompressed?

Answer 1

The closest consumers can get to "uncompressed video" is by using MiniDV tape and storing in DV format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV

MiniDV tape based camcorders have been doing this for years.

More recently, HDV compression has been popular - you still use the same miniDV tape, but four times more data fits on the same tape. The visual (and audio) result is excellent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV

Using miniDV tape based camcorders for DV and HDV continues to be the professionals choice for several reasons - but mostly because the quality is the best available video and tapes are cheap. The reason the quality is best is because the least amount of compression is applied. More compression = discarded data = reduced video quality.

More recently, RED introduced a camera system that captures WAY more data than HDV and writes that data strem directly to hard drives or flash memory - You need to record your audio to something else... perhaps a Digidesign ProTools (or better) multi-track audio set up...

http://www.red.com/

Answer 2

uncompressed standard definition video has a datarate of about 150 Mbps, and HD is 900 Mbps. the gold standard for consumer video is miniDV. it has video compressed about 6:1 and uncompressed digital audio.  the next step up is JVC D-9 or Panasonic DVCpro50. These both use the DV codec but at twice the data rate for about 3:1 compression of a standard definition picture. Sony's digiBeta has 2:1 compression using a differenct codec. The worlds first digital tape format, D1, records uncompressed digital video at standard definition on large 1 inch tape reels.  These formats were all invented prior to the introduction of DTV and its High Definition presentation. It is not possible to simply take a tape system designed for one data rate and expect it to handle a picture that has 6 times the pixels per frame.  However the codec developed for DTV uses MPEG2 compression and that can put an HD picture into the same datarate as miniDV and other standard definition digital recorders.  I am not aware of any camcorder that can record uncompressed video, SD or HD. Television studios with HD digital cameras are normally for live production where the final mixed output is MPEG2 compressed for broadcast, or recorded on a studio deck. The highest datarate that has been ever been used on studio tape recorders is under 200 Mbps.  As a practical matter,  high datarates are only recorded on Hard Disk video servers.  Wyoming PBS uses a server to delay PBS feeds. Even network television digital feeds are sent compressed to save on satellite bandwidth.