miniDV is the most popular digital camcorder format at the moment.
miniDV is a video cassette designed for use in miniDV digital camcorders. The picture quality of digital video (DV) recorded on a miniDV cassette is basically identical or better to the quality of DV recorded on a Hi8 or 8mm cassette by a Digital8 camcorder. miniDV can have up to 530 lines of video resolution for some camcorder models. However, miniDV tapes are smaller which allows for smaller camcorders. miniDV tapes are available in lengths of 30 and 60 minutes (plus, recording in LP mode lets you extend total recording time with a 60-minute tape to 90 minutes).
MiniDV / DV
The "L" cassette is about 120 x 90 x 12 mm and can record up to two hours of video. The better known MiniDV tapes are 65 x 48 x 12 mm and hold either an hour or an hour and a half of video depending on whether the video is recorded at Standard Play (SP) or Extended Play(sometimes called Long Play) (EP/LP). The tapes sell for less than USD 5 each as of 2003. DV on SP has a helical scan track width of 10 micrometres, EP uses a track width of only 6.7 micrometres.
Software is currently available for ordinary home computers which allows users to record any sort of computer data on MiniDV cassettes using common DV decks or camcorders. A 60-minute MiniDV tape will hold approximately 13 Gigabytes of data in this form of usage as the DV video format has a constant data rate of 3.6 Megabytes per second (3.6 MB/s x 60 seconds x 60 minutes = 12,960 MB per hour = 12.9 GB per hour).
How to transfer miniDV to DVD.
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