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One other question though…
Just this.. should all digital video records that record onto minidv be able to play all minidv tapes? Does it matter if perhaps the recorder the tape was made on was of a higher resolution or framerate? If I recorded, let’s say, on a canon gl-1 and then tried to play that tape on holiday camcorder would it work?
Thanks,
James -
8 Replies
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All mini-DV is 720×480 at 29.97 frames per second. No exceptions.
Things like 24 fps modes on some cameras are done by inserting extra frames into the video to bring it up to the 29.97 frame rate. The computer discards them later. Things like widescreen are anamorphic…the widescreen image is sqeezed into 720×480.
So the bottome line is that, yes, any mini-DV camera can play back any mini-DV tape. If it’s anamorphic and the camera doesn’t understand that then it might be stretched funny on the TV. And if it’s 24 fps and the camera doesn’t understand that it may play those extra frames and it will look slightly jittery.
So there are some things that can look strange or wrong depending on where you play it, but it will at least PLAY. You’ll be able to see and hear it even if it’s a little bit strange in some way.
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Thanks for the comprehensive answer, Jeff.
I need to get me a headcleaner for the camera i’m using!
I was having a corrupted image coming through on both the LCD and log and capture window.
The odd thing is, when I try the tape that was already in there (it’s a friend’s camera) it works fine. I brought my tapes on a plane so perhaps it’s something to do with the x-ray machine… who knows. -
[James Veitch] “I was having a corrupted image coming through on both the LCD and log and capture window.
“That’s common if the heads in the camera that RECORDED the tape were temporarily dirty (clogged).
Clogged heads commonly “self-clean” and the problems can disappear, but the tape that was recorded DURING the time the heads were clogged will be virtually unplayable.
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[Jeff Carpenter] “All mini-DV is 720×480 at 29.97 frames per second. No exceptions.”
Jeez, is that where I’ve been going wrong with my PAL easy setup?
Peter
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Jeff Carpenter – “All mini-DV is 720×480 at 29.97 frames per second. No exceptions.”
Not true HDV is recorded onto mini-dv tapes and HDV is NOT 740×480
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There are 3 formats of SD DV. DVCam, DV, and DVCPro. They are all recorded differently at differnent tape speeds and either locked or unloced audio. If you have a DVCam player it most likely won’t play the DVCPro and vice versa, but both will play the generic DV format. To add to the confusion, regular DV can also be recorded in an LP speed that won’t play back on DVCam or DVCPro correctly.
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I think he’s just talking about DV, not HDV. They are very different formats that just happen to share a tape transport system.
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Zak Mussig- “I think he’s just talking about DV, not HDV. They are very different formats that just happen to share a tape transport system.”
NO he spisificaly said Mini-DV
Jeff Carpenter- “All mini-DV is 720×480 at 29.97 frames per second. No exceptions.”
A Mini-DV tape is simply a data tape it can hold any data that one puts on it. It just happens that cameras record video data on them.
if you look up he deffinition if mini-dv on wikipedia it states
“Software is currently available for ordinary home computers which allows users to record any sort of computer data on MiniDV cassettes using common DV decks or camcorders. A 60-minute MiniDV tape will hold approximately 13 Gigabytes of data in this form of usage as the DV video format has a constant data rate of 3.6 Megabytes per second (3.6 MB/s
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