MiniDV or DVD

25-05-2007, 10:53 PM

Hi to all

I have read many posts and I still have the same doubt, what is better, MiniDV or DVD?

- Image quality?
- Easy to edit in a PC?

- Optical zoom is very important and I have a question, why top of cams with High resolution, 3CCDs... have small optical zoom (10x) and the cheaper cams have 30 - 40x optical zoom?. A Panasonic GS320 with a 30x optical zoom will be perfect.
- Photo for me is not very important

Looking for Panasonic, Sony, Canon or JVC

Thanks

**senu** · 26-05-2007, 8:34 AM

I have read many posts and I still have the same doubt, what is better, MiniDV or DVD?

There are very good examples of DVD camcorders , and poor examples of MiniDV but on a level playing field, the DVD wins out mainly on the convenience of being able to watch it right away or doing away with the need to capture the footage in real time on a PC

- Image quality?:
MiniDV
As it is Least compressed format However bear in mind that it is eventually going to become a DVD. As such the encoder or encoding process used is important in maintaining the quality as close to original as possible

- Easy to edit in a PC?:
MiniDV.
DV AVI does not suffer " generational" IQ loss from of rendering and rerendering in the way that mpeg ( from DVD) does and the way DV AVI is "made" makes it easier for software to edit it still maintaining Quality. Mpeg editing is now more mature though and even non Mpeg dedicated editors seem to be able to do a pretty good job

- Optical zoom is very important and I have a question, why top of cams with High resolution, 3CCDs... have small optical zoom (10x) and the cheaper cams have 30 - 40x optical zoom?.

Im not sure but I believe it relates to the size of sensor: (could be wrong) and it seems easier to get more Zoom on a smaller sensor. However a smaller sized sensor would inherently be a less efficient image gathering one.
Still 10X Zoom is plenty...anything more you would most definitely not be handholding: Are you planning on videotaping the Moon?

redsox_mark · 26-05-2007, 1:39 PM

Yes, the size of the optical zoom relates to the sensor. With a smaller sensor it is easy to supply a greater zoom range. So it is the lower end models with small sensors which have the greater optical zoom. I agree with Senu, 10x is generally enough; certainly for handheld use I'd not want to use more than that.