Mini DV vs. Digital 8?

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chchaisson1
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Mini DV vs. Digital 8?

Post by chchaisson1 »

Which do you think has better quality? I noticed that Mini DV sometimes seems to be lower quality, and Digital 8 has better color but I may be wrong.
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RE: Mini DV vs. Digital 8?

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I'd say they are just about equal. One plus for Digital8 is they tend to have bigger lenses, and the tape is much cheaper. (As well as the camera to start with.) MiniDV's tend to have more features though, and you'd be hard pressed to find a Digital 8 in good condition with a mic input. (All the new ones have omitted it, the old ones have 'em though.)
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RE: Mini DV vs. Digital 8?

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We just picked up a used Sont TRV-103 D* for a spare drummer cam for shooting music videos. The encoding of both is exactly the same 4:1:1 sampling with a 25 Mbps datarate. The quiality of the image has little to do with the format of the tape, the data is exactly the same using both media, the differences are in the camera. The D-8 we picked up is comaprable to the low end JVC's we use GR-DV30's. The low end mini DV that has really impressed me so far though it the Panasonic PV-DV53. For a cheap ( sub $300.00 new, refurbs on EBAY for about 179.00 ) 1/4 inch single CCD camera the image is pretty impresive. When shooting music videos I soften up the VX2100 a bit, and this panny is a pretty decent match without correction for our vx2100 footage - assuming the lighting is pretty weel done.
The one thing to keep in mind with D-8 however, is that the tapes were designed for capturing an analog signal, and analog is much more forgiving of dropouts than digital. Iwould only use higher quality Hi-8 tapes and keep reuse to a minimum. Look for a decent quality camera, and shoot a bit of tape to make sure you are getting the look you want, of cours that is true with any camers.
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Lee
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RE: Mini DV vs. Digital 8?

Post by Lee »

I currently own a Digital 8 camera and having used a Mini DV one in the past, I can hardly notice any difference. My camera produces picture that I am very happy with and does have a Mic input.
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Post by DEDFX »

I'm just sayin this cuz i dont know how to post a thread, but can someone show me an olnine movie (or a test ) of a digital 8 because i want to know if i want to upgrade to a miniDV or not. I've got a Digital 8 Sony- TRV260
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Post by Raptor »

DEDFX wrote:I'm just sayin this cuz i dont know how to post a thread, but can someone show me an olnine movie (or a test ) of a digital 8 because i want to know if i want to upgrade to a miniDV or not. I've got a Digital 8 Sony- TRV260
Again, there is no difference created by the format of the tape. Both record a digital image using exactly the same encoding. Any difference in quality is from teh rest of the camera, the Lens, CCDs, imager, and A/D conversion circuit. Both tape formats are identical 25 MBps encoding, the difference is representation of the image, and this information color qualtiy etc is decided long before the 1's and 0
s are written to the tape. In an analogue format, tape format can casue a difference in qualty, due to the amount of information that different formats can record, but Digital8, mini-DV, DV-CAM, and DVC-Pro 25 all use exactly the same encoding and data rates.
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