HDV Mini DV Digital Video Recording Tape

What is the difference between DVCAM and mini DV recording formats?

• Cassette memory - IC-equipped pro models offer four times the memory of consumer models

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  Durability - Pro media has an optimized DLC layer and surface treatment. This improves performance for editing and long-term archiving.
• Dropouts - Controlled surface finishing helps cut DV CAM tape dropouts in half, compared to consumer DV.
• Interchange - Tighter slitting tolerances mean DV CAM tape works almost flawlessly when recorded on one VTR and played back on another.
• Shrinkage - DV CAM tape cuts dimensional shrinkage in half, an important benefit for archival stability.
• Running time difference - DV CAM machines use a transport speed faster than DV machines. So you'll experience differences between the marked and actual recording times. For example, a 60-minute DV cassette holds only 40 minutes of DV CAM footage. They use the same video encoding algorithm.

DV is the international digital video standard created by a consortium of 10 companies for a consumer digital video format. The companies involved were Matsushita Electric Industrial Corp (Panasonic), Sony Corp, Victor Corporation of Japan (JVC), Philips Electronics, N.V., Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd, Hitachi, Ltd., Sharp Corporation,  Thompson Multimedia, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation. Since then others have joined and there are now over 60 companies in the DV consortium. DV was originally known as DVC (Digital Video Cassette) and uses a 1/4 inch (6.35mm) metal evaporate tape to record very high quality digital video.

DV uses 10 micron tracks in SP recording mode and Sony's DVCAM professional format increases the track pitch to 15 microns (at the loss of recording time) to improve tape interchange and increase the robustness and reliability of insert editing. Panasonic's DVCPRO increases track pitch and width to 18 microns with a further loss of recording time.