DV quality

[kenleeliew]

Hi there! I recently purchased a Sony DCR-HC21E, which comes with a 380K effective (680K gross) CCD. Does the quality of videos captured on my miniDV tape equate to that of DV transferred and stored on the computer via firewire? Is there any loss of quality? Thanks.

[Richard_G]

The pixel count is irrelevant when talking about a camcorder as the resolution is fixed by the standard. If NTSC the resolution is 720 x 480 which is 345,600 pixels or if PAL, the resolution is 720 x 576 which is 414,720 pixels. It is only relevant in determining the quality of any stills you may take.

This is recorded as data to tape and transferred to pc if using Firewire. The data on your hard drive is identical to the data on the tape so the quality is identical. The quality of the footage you get is more down to the quality of the optics and how good you are at using the camcorder rather than the CCD pixel count.

[mikesbytes]

As Richard said

This is recorded as data to tape and transferred to pc if using Firewire. The data on your hard drive is identical to the data on the tape so the quality is identical

Firewire is simply moving the data from the tape to the disk. Just confirm that no frames are dropped. If you have frames dropped or cant tell, then try WinDV its excellent.

Computer monitors are progressive and TV's are generally interlaced, this means that even though you have identical data, it may look a little different to each other.

[greymalkin]

please note also that the captured dv video may look great while the rendered mpeg may look blurry and terrible when you play it on your computer through something like media player. This doesn't necessarily mean that the encoding process sucked all the clarity out of the image. It could very well be that the codec your computer is using to decode mpeg video is just not very good. The real test is to burn it and watch on your TV. If you are serious about these projects it would benefit you greatly to get a pack of RW's and test on your TV before you start burning the R's and finding out you over-corrected XYZ or accidentally reversed the field order or any number of things you might not pick up on the computer.

[kenleeliew]

Thank you all for the info and advice!