DVCAM or mini-DV on PD-150 and FCP?

squidlayo · July 12, 2004

DVCAM is better quality than mini-DV but does the FCP encoder actually take advantage of the quality difference?

The FCP codec just says DV NTSC and doesn't seem to indicate if it will be worth the loss of 20min on a standard mini-DV tape to get better quality.

Also, since my final product goes straight to DVD, usually at around 6-8 mbps, would it even matter if it was higher quality on DVCAM if it is reduced by the m2v compression?

Thanks for your expertise!

Alvin Pingol · July 13, 2004

>>DVCAM is better quality than mini-DV

Only in the fact that there are fewer dropouts. The image quality itself (color, sharpness, noise) is the same, since they both use the DV25 codec and thus have the same compression ratios.

If you keep your heads clean, MiniDV should work fine.

AStar · July 14, 2004

DVCAM is only higher tape speed and not better quality. The signal is simply written over more tape are area, which reduces the amount of information lost when a drop-out occurs. You could look at it like this, LP mode is written like this //////////, SP like / / / / / / / / , and DVCAM like /__ /__ /__ /__ /__ /__ / . There is actually more slant on the DVCAM mode, but you can see how much more info loss there would be at LP mode if an error occured.

Phil Rhodes · July 14, 2004

Hi,

Another interesting subtlety of this is that DVCAM heads are materially different to miniDV heads, since the DVCAM tracks are wider as well as further apart (which your otherwise accurate diagram didn't quite show.) This is worth remembering if you are recording with a DVCAM deck in standard DV mode, since its wider head gap will produce theoretically nonstandard recordings. I have seen examples of that JVC DV/VHS dual player thing which strongly disliked wide-track DV.

Another one to file away in the back of your brain under "strange untersubtleties of the video world."

Phil

squidlayo · July 20, 2004

Thank You everyone for your knowledge. I have a more complete understanding of the difference now and appreciate your time in responding to this forum!

Nathan