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+--- Thread: Hard disk camcorders video quality (/showthread.php?tid=86469)
Hard disk camcorders video quality - Mac1337 - 10-22-2009
I was going over the specs of this Sony camcorder but they say nothing about the video format. Is it compressed? If so, what is the format? DV, MPEG-2, H.264? I have heard 8mm tape camcorders have a better quality.
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Filliam H. Muffman - 10-22-2009
BHPhotovideo has it listed as Resolution: 640 x 340 (VGA)
The Sony website has it listed as SD video, Video Resolution : 720 x 480
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Lew Zealand - 10-22-2009
All consumer digital video formats are compressed. Mini DV has relatively mild compression but that's for 2 reasons - the tapes are big enough to handle the higher data volume and it's a very old codec and is not very efficient. Higher bitrate makes up for this to give good video quality.
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Mac1337 - 10-22-2009
Sony's site does say MPEG-2. But MPEG-2 can be of any quality. I wonder how MiniDV compares.
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Filliam H. Muffman - 10-22-2009
MPEG-2 is a standard compression/codec format for recording video. It has very little to do with the source resolution of the image sensor or the recorded video.
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Mac1337 - 10-22-2009
Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
MPEG-2 is a standard compression/codec format for recording video. It has very little to do with the source resolution of the image sensor or the recorded video.
Exactly. So just saying it is MPEG-2 is not an statement on quality.
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Article Accelerator - 10-22-2009
Assuming the camcorder isn't HD, the image quality of miniDV is superior--all other types use much higher compression (lossy!) levels and do not support editablity. These are informative:
http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,350706,350863#msg-350863
http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,190357,190372#msg-190372
http://forums.dealmac.com/read.php?4,2750271,2750443#2750443
Re: Hard disk camcorders video quality - Mac1337 - 10-22-2009
That's what I suspected. There are very few miniDV camcorders on the market though.