Which one is better for me? I plan to use it for filming compositing shots and whatnot. I have a mini dvd camcorder, but I’ve heard that mini dv is much better, and records at a higher quality. What are your experiences with each?
With mini DVD you’ll get 20 to 30 minutes of recording time per disc, which cost several dollars for a 3-pack. Mini DV will give you about an hour, plus they are completely reusable.
For mini DVD I believe you need some sort of video ripping software. With mini DV you can import the video with firewire into any number of video capture programs, including Windows Movie Maker (which is a piece of junk, but it gets the basics done).
In my experience the mini DVD cameras are much more prone to writing errors, which ruin the entire disc. However the last time I handled one was about a year ago, and it’s possible the technology has improved.
I’d go for mini DV.
-Laurifer
You’re right about the errors. I’ve had many corrupted discs. I just fixed 3 last night. And you lose absolutely everything when the disc gets corrupted. However, you don’t have to buy software. I just rip mine using VLC Media Player. Another question, do mini dv’s have the same quality?
When you shoot on mini DVD, you are starting out shooting compressed MPEG footage, whereas on a Mini-DV tape, you are shooting full quality video. I ALWAYS recommend to clients that they buy a mini-dv- it’s better use for your money unless you only plan on watching the finished disc, not editing or altering it in any way. Also, with a mini-DV you can capture via firewire into any major editing app, but the mini-dvd requires you to rip the file first, or use the (usually) terrible apps that come with the camera to edit.
Also…
“plus they are completely reusable”
Never more than twice if you can help it…mini-dv is still fragile tape and doesn’t take to multiple passes well. You’ll start to see glitches and dropout over multiple uses.
Yeah? Okay, thanks for the correction.
-Laurifer
Sorry to take this a little off topic, but I’m about to enter into a film&animation contest. I dont think anyone else except me is doing an animation.
My question is about one of the requrements for entry. You have to supply a Mini DV tape of the film. This is so they can ‘process’ the entry in top quality later on or something.
I was wondering if this is nesisary for a animation? And if so is there some way of getting an animation onto a mini dv tape? Im kinda confused by it all, since its not something ive had to do before, and i dont even know if its possible etc.
I was going to start my own thread about it, but figured since you guys seem to know what ur talking about ill just post here.
whereas on a Mini-DV tape, you are shooting full quality video
miniDV sub samples the colour channels, only one colour pixel for every 4 luminosity pixels is stored.
[
DV uses DCT intraframe compression at a fixed bitrate of 25 megabits per second (25.146 Mbit/s), which, when added to the sound data (1.536 Mbit/s), the subcode data, error detection, and error correction (approx 8.7 Mbit/s) amounts in all to roughly 36 megabits per second (approx 35.382 Mbit/s). At equal bitrates, DV performs somewhat better than the older MJPEG codec, and is comparable to intraframe MPEG-2.
](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV)
if its compressed, it isn’t full quality. But its still easier to edit and higher qualaty than MPEG. Which includes the HDV format.
I was wondering if this is nesisary for a animation? And if so is there some way of getting an animation onto a mini dv tape?
some cameras have S-video input.
I’d recommend miniDV over DVD anytime, esp. if you’re having to do any postprocessing of your footage. However, I’d also recommend a newer HDD camcorder over miniDV for similar reasons. Also, I would recommend one of the newest SD memory card camcorders that record Hi-Def footage directly to a chip in one of the new hi-def recording formats (like HDV or AVCHD or some similar MPEG-4 format) over a Standard-Def HDD camcorder, but that’s getting pretty pricey. But the HD footage would certainly look better when compositing blender stuff over it. A lot depends on your final target audience… if its those postage-stamp youtubers, then don’t bother with HD. But if you’re putting together a reel to show a hiring manager, it never hurts to knock off a few socks with lots 'o pixels!
EDIT: oh, yeah, there are camcorders that record Hi-Def to miniDV, too. That might be a tad cheaper than a memory card one and still have higher quality.
EDIT2: altho, those cheapo memory card only units from the likes of Aiptek run 1080p MPEG-4 for $200… not bad, I’d say.
I’ve encoded blender-produced animations into DV-AVI and sent them back out to a miniDV camcorder before using Pinnacle Studio. Can’t recall the exact process, since it was years ago, but I know it is possible via firewire.
if its compressed, it isn’t full quality.
True, technically speaking though, all digital video by nature is compressed one way or another once you feed it into a computer. All you need to compare is this…if you capture dv footage via component through a breakout box at 10-bit uncompressed, you get file sizes around 1 gig/ minute (I’m not talking firewire’s lossy dv compression, even though that stilll looks better). If you compare that to mpeg2 file sizes, even highly compressed, mpeg2 still falls short in delivering all the information. Not to mention, mpeg doesn’t handle frames the same way video does, and if you plan on getting into any kind of VFX tracking or compositing, you really want a stable frame format with as much color information as possible. Also, you can always make an mpeg from the full quality version, but not the reverse.
HDV can look really, really nice, even though it is an mpeg variant. There are two things you have to consider before buying and committing to HDV, though. First, unless your target audience all have blu-ray players, chances are you are going to need to scale the HDV image back to SD for normal DVD output. This means you are left with a choice: crop the image, letterbox the image, or squeeze the image. You also need to have little kick to your computer…I wouldn’t mess with editing HDV on any less than a dual-core machine with a couple gigs of RAM (our main Final Cut system here is a quad core with 8 gigs of ram, and it struggles with larger projects). Also be prepared for longer processing times. Case in point, we had a client that shot 10 hours of kid’s dance recitals in HDV. It had to be fed in HDV, edited HDV, scaled to SD, then output to DVD, for only a marginal improvement in picture quality. What should have been done in a week took three, because the rendering and conversion process takes a lot longer. Granted, now (if you don’t mind spending a little $$$), you can buy decks from Sony that can downsample HDV to SD live, but usually only through firewire and you are stuck with the same aspect questions as above. If all of that don’t deter you, then HDV is a very nice looking format that will serve you well.
Finally, getting your animation onto a mini-dv tape…almost all non-linear editing programs (even movie maker and imovie) can accept a video file from Blender, and have some form of “Export to tape” feature. You’ll need to hook your videocamera up via firewire, put your Blender video on the timeline, and use the “Export to tape” feature. When you render out of Blender, you want to make sure you are rendering at 720X480 (640X480 is still okay, but not ideal). I usually render out a sequence of full-quality targa frames, which I import into Premiere Pro as a image sequence, and then export a variety of compressed versions from there.
Anyhow, hope it helps
CJ
With regard to consumer cameras I believe it’s best not to take for granted that a consumer camera has firewire in or svideo in to put video back onto tape.
CJ thanks for the info, very useful, I’ve been considering upgrading from a JVC miniDV camera to HD but the camera is only part of the equation, there’s backup and storage of all the HD video one captures that needs to be considered also. With miniDV tape once grabbed to your PC the tape serves as a backup stored in a cool dry place for a few years, not like having a 40GB or so h/d that you need to empty for the next shoot and have to get the raw content off to storage each time. That’s what’s stopping me so far moving to HD as a consumer not semi or pro. Storage and backup/archiving for posterity.
Not to take this off topic again, but what about the camera’s that have the internal HD’s? I would be really scared carrying something like that around.
I’d like to get back into shooting. We had sweet camera’s in my High School media class (we used those big ones like news crews used to carry) those things had so many buttons on them!
Ok, looks like I made a mistake buying this, lol. My first MiniDV camera went bad on me, and that really turned me off to those types of camcorders. However, with this dvd camcorder, the quality isn’t THAT bad, but the disc corruptions and errors are TERRIBLE!! I know how to fix the corrupted discs because I’ve fixed a total of seven this week (don’t ask how you corrupt seven discs). But I might buy another minidv camcorder. However, how many times can you use one tape before you begin to notice severe quality reduction??
Not to take this off topic again, but what about the camera’s that have the internal HD’s? I would be really scared carrying something like that around.
Thay wouldn’t be verry practical. no matter ho big the HDD is, when its full you cannot just pop in an empty one, like you can with tape and DVD cameras. This is the same reson why I dislike anything with fixed storage.
I’ve had the same miniDV cam for about 5 years and it’s still going strong, clean the heads with a cleaning tape once a year but never use the same tape twice, record on them once, grab them once, store a copy of the grab on my PC, back up to DVD and put the tape and backup DVD (raw) away for safe keeping to slowly deteriate.
The only thing replaced on the cam is the battery, but I found a great site for replacements, Duracell with 3yr warranties and no memory (they say )
http://www.duracelldirect.co.uk/
Great price and near next day delivery free. UK only though I guess and a bit off topic.
What would be the best for a price range of $200-300? Maybe 350. .
@ Yellow- it’s funny, a couple of years ago you could take for granted that any DV camcorder would have firewire and S…you’re right, the shift is more and more towards proprietary plugins for consumer cams. The pro ones, thankfully, have to conform to certain standards or the simply don’t get used
@nfollmer-
I have actually been surprised by the quality of some of the newer hard-drive based cams. It’s really no different than a mini-dvd cam, other than it stores the mpeg2 (or more likely, a proprietary variant of mpeg2) right to the hd instead of disc. Still, for strictly consumer cameras, they really can shoot a stunning picture, so long as you don’t plan on doing anything else with them afterwards.
By the way, here is the best of both worlds:
It’s on my wish list, that’s for certain
EDIT-lol, like 4 posts showed up while typing…
never use the same tape twice, record on them once, grab them once, store a copy of the grab on my PC, back up to DVD and put the tape and backup DVD (raw) away for safe keeping to slowly deteriate.
PRECISELY. Good advice to give.
Canons are always a good buy, look into this one for example:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=174&modelid=14727
I’ve seen people using cheap 2nd user tablet PC’s (the first incarnation) of eBay for recording straight to it’s harddisk. (As long as your consumer camera has pass through?)
But not as niffty as your link.
Yeah, if you have enough kick to send the signal through, it is totally possible. I used a slightly older laptop to live capture the signal from a multi-camera parade shoot to an external firewire drive for editing. Saved me some capturing time later. I still ran a DVCam backup, and would with one of the external devices too…but I am paranoid like that
@CJ Cool, your link to Open World looks interesting…
@vfxjunkie Sorry don’t mean to highjack the thread, I hope you’ve got the answer you needed, but has anyone looked at the nodes in blender for video post work like ‘Magic Bullet’ style things?
Is it possible to have your own custom made camcorder. I mean you know how they’ll let you “build your own computer”, is it possible with camcorders too?