DV vs MiniDV vs Digital8 and Type 1 vs Type 2

[choirislife923]

can someone please tell me what is the difference between DV, miniDV, and Digital 8? is there a resolution difference? i was reading a manual for a digital 8 camcoder and it said resolution was 352x240. also, what type of DV should be use for transcoding? i am thinking about realtime transcoding DV tape (to mpeg2 NTSC DVD specs [720x480, 48000hz]) as it comes into my PC by using mainconcept, but i was wondering if it would matter (i'm not even sure if mainconcept would ask you which type you want to save as if you are going to directly transcode to mpeg2).

[petar]

DV is a compression method. MiniDV and Digital8 are camcorder types. Both use DV but one records on miniDV tapes (that one was obvious, wasn't it?) and the other can use more than one tape type including the "old" 8 and Hi8 (Sony designed it to be compatible with the old analog camcorders; nice idea but miniDV seems to be more popular because they are smaller).
As for type 1 and 2, it's to do with the way Windows saves the DV (the audio part) into an AVI format. Irrelevant to the camcorder. You save in the type that your encoder supports. I don't use mainconcept so I'm not sure about it but most support both types.

There's a nice DV technical web site on http://www.adamwilt.com/DV.html

[choirislife923]

...the other can use more than one tape type including the "old" 8 and Hi8 (Sony designed it to be compatible with the old analog camcorders; nice idea but miniDV seems to be more popular because they are smaller)...

does that mean that you can store DV (as in digitally compressed video) on an regular 8mm tape, or does the Digital8 cam switch it to analog recording (as in not-DV but regular old 8mm camcorder recording style) for the old 8mm cassette?

[petar]

Yes, you can store DV on them but they have to run at 2x in NTSC and 1.5x in PAL, so you can record half (for NTSC) or 2/3 (for PAL) of what the original tape length was (15 min on a 30 min tape for NTSC, for example).

[ofbarea]

There's a nice DV technical web site on http://www.adamwilt.com/DV.html

This web link is great. Thanks a lot!!!

[rb]

Difference between miniDV and DV (called DVCam) is that miniDV is the so called 'home video' version, whereas DVCam is the pro version. DVCam tapes are made in the same size and a bigger size, with a blue, dustproof case. DVCam recorders can record DVCam data to a normal miniDV tape. DVcam tape goes faster a bit, so it has higher resolution. There is some diference between DVCam recorded on a miniDV tape and DVCam recorded on a DVCam tape, but its only the software. While both format records a longitudinal time base code, professional TC can be outputted only from DVCam tapes, so to force the pros to buy the almost identical, but much higher priced pro tapes..