Type 1 or Type 2?

[Haopengyou]

Do all HD mini dv camcorders have the option of storing in type 1 format and type 2 format?

[DB83]

That is impossible to answer. This is what you do.

1. Find a camera
2. Look at its specs
3. If still in doubt outsource its user manual.

I just checked one and it does not record in either type-1 or type-2.

[Haopengyou]

Gotcha....I read more posts after I posted this question - didn't read quite enough - and it seems that type 1 and type 2 are computer side - file formats and not camera side. Which line of hd mini dv tape camcorders are likely to give me the best sound? I am willing to use wireless mics to improve the clarity.

[aedipuss]

HD on miniDV tape is called HDV. and none record in type 1 or 2 DV. they record in HDV which is a type of mpeg-2 not dv avi.

none. they record audio in compressed mpeg 1 layer 2. better off with a separate audio recorder and mic.

[DB83]

I am sure you are correct. On the camera I looked at - a Sony HDR-HC9 - the following appears in the spec:

Switchable HDV/DV Format Recording

Record and play back both High Definition and Standard Definition video recorded on standard MiniDV cassettes (sold separately).

That implies that the camera is capable of recording SD DV. The printed spec on the page did not go in to much detail about audio but it did mention mpeg1 layer 2.

[aedipuss]

correct but he was asking about HD which is not recorded in type 1 or 2.

[DB83]

correct but he was asking about HD which is not recorded in type 1 or 2.

Ok. I just appear to have read the OP wrong "...HD Mini DV cameras......" When I put that in a search engine, the Sony 'popped out'

[Cornucopia]

Types 1 or 2 only apply to DV streams once they have been captured to computer and put into a mm container. The difference is of course the addition of a copy of the audio in a separate audio-only stream in Type 2.
Since the dv stream on tape has not yet been captured nor containerized, it could never exist that way. It is, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to a type 1 stream with the mm container headers.

Dv uses LPCM audio, but Hdv uses Mpg1Layer2 compressed audio. What a step backward for consumers!

Scott

[2Bdecided]

It's laughable to suggest that the weak point of camcorder audio is MPEG-1 layer II stereo encoding at 384kbps.

Unless the MPEG encoder is broken, this coding is audibly transparent on almost any piece of audio at this bitrate. Which is more than you can say of any camcorder microphone, and any camcorder mic pre-amp.

Using lossy audio (instead of ~1.5Mbps LPCM) allows an extra 1.1Mbps of data to be allocated to the MPEG-2 HD video. I wouldn't bet my life on spotting this improvement ever - but the video is clearly in far greater need of more bits than the audio. No one has ever claimed that 25Mbps MPEG-2 HD is visually transparent to the source. In many higher end camcorders, and even in some situations with lesser camcorders, that video compression is the limiting factor. (More often than not, the human behind the viewfinder is the limiting factor!)

Cheers,
David.

[Cornucopia]

I know the reasoning behind it's use, I just don't agree with that decision. As a (primarily) audio engineer, it is quite easy to connect VERY HIGH quality mikes, along with VERY HIGH quality pre's, onto a pro-sumer DV camera and get PRISTINE source audio for indie films, etc (as I have done many times). But, even though as you suggest, MP2 @ 384kbps is equivalent to "transparent", it IS taking a hit. And one should never prematurely compromise their source quality, because then you can never get it back. It may be transparent if left as-is, and just had simple editing done to it, but I can guarantee that the PC knows it's different, and if you do processing to the file (such as mixing, eq adjustment, etc) you are changing the "default" relationship that allowed the "masked" frequencies to be removed transparently, and so you are also making it NOT TRANSPARENT anymore.

So, no it is NOT laughable, and yes it is a step backward. Some consumers might accept that in order to achieve HD video. I certainly find it unacceptable and would NEVER recommend it to anyone who wanted to produce HQ audio (as well as video).

The compromise, as I see it, in those situations, would be dual-system audio using a portable audio-centric recorder, which can be gotten quite inexpensively now (with up to 24/96/2ch/LPCM being common).

Scott

[2Bdecided]

Exactly - if you care that much, it's easy to add PCM outboard audio. You've got to add external microphones to get anything half-decent anyway, so it's the logical extension of that.

"real" HD productions have 5.1 sound (or better). 6 channels of LPCM, say 48kHz 20-bit, would be nearly 6Mbps. I think I'd see the difference if the video bitrate was reduced by 6Mbps to fit that in. So having production grade multi-channel lossless audio in HDV was never going to be an option.


Lots of codecs that are no better (and some that are certainly far worse) than 384kbps MPEG-1 layer II are widely used as links in the broadcasting chain. I think it's fairly rare for what hits the final broadcast encoders to have been lossless up until that point. You can use this as an argument either way though: either it proves that it doesn't matter, or it suggests that you should use lossless as much as possible to prevent yet more cascaded lossy coding.


I don't hear a problem EQ-ing 384kbps MPEG-1 layer II. The only time it breaks down for me is with radical manipulation of the stereo sound field.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. You could add outboard video compression too I guess. You can avoid any part of HDV that you don't like. It seems to me though that, for a consumer and prosumer format, the right choice was made. I see artefacts in the video part all the time. I never hear problems in the audio part. On subsequent generations, the video gets worse more dramatically and more quickly than the audio. Given this, it makes no sense to say the video should have been compromised to improve the audio - especially as it's far easier and cheaper to capture the audio separately to whatever standard you require.