Digital 8 or Pure DV

[Phil Pugh]

I actually own both DV (well JVC miniDV) and Sony D8 (TR7000E) .

JVC (can't remember model)
Plus points:
Small, easy to carry.
Well featured.
Good quality recording in normal lighting

Negative points:
Poor battery life. (about 20 mins)
Expensive batteries.
Poor sound (mic's on top of unit and picks up motor noise).
No external mic/headphone socket.
Poor low light peformance
Poor autofocus, and manual focus is not easy.
No DV In or Out.

Sony TR7000E
I have enabled the DV (and analogue) In on this.

Plus.
Good low light performance
Good battery life (over 1 hour)
Manual focus ring - easy to use
Good sound
DV In and Out
External mic and headphone sockets
Well featured

Negative.
'Normal' camcorder size - a bit bulky


I am consumer user - i.e. not professional and as such I am not too demanding. I don't go for LCD displays as they aren't very good in normal light and useless in sunlight. Add to this they consume battery power - but that's a personal thing.

The small size of the JVC is good for casual use but makes steady shots more difficult - it's so small it 'amplifies' any movement. (It also looks ridiculous on my large tripod!)

[Grigory]

Hi,
Considering tapes, I used continuous downgrading of their claimed performance, starting from Sony MP "Hi-8, Digital8", then with TDK Hi-8 MP, BASF Video8 High Grade Hi-FI, and finally use TDK video 8 EHG tape.

When I find any droppped frame on any of these tapes, I'll post a message immediately.

The only distorted frames I got were two or three in the beginning of single clip from many, probably because tape loading was not finished at beginning of recording. This is not a defect, of course.

One more funny glitch was with DV Raptor. Once I made tape index and launched batch capture. Camcorder moved to the very beginning of tape, and the first frame on that tape did not contain timecode. The application could not decide what to do and refused to continue. I had to FF tape for few seconds and start again. This time the tape was positioned at 00:00:00 timecode and everything worked well. I recommend to start batch captures from 1-3 sec timecode values. It is a safety measure you can easily take while shooting.

Canopus forum has lost all messages recently . On that forum, there was a message with a story of video8 tapes testing. Four D8 camcorders were used with 4 different regular 8 tapes. The tapes were recorded and then exchanged many times between different D8 devices. There were NO dropouts or compatibility problems.
This info made many of us thinking that Sony just wants more money for Hi-8 digital8 tapes, but this format itself is quite tolerant to recording media characteristics. This is not surprising, because digital storage can be accompanied by ECC, and, as I wrote above, does not necessarily mean increased recording density. By increasing the tape speed by a factor of 1.5 (compared with PAL), Sony actually decreased recording density on the same media, or used similar density of magnetic maximums and minumums per unit area, but used a large portion of data for ECC.

In addition, the tape transport and head mechanisms should have been redesigned on a basis of existing miniDV technology, because both formats are quite similar on tape.
Higher head velocity over a tape requires better tape contact with head drum. So, maybe the absence of dropouts can be well explained by only "mechanical" terms.

Grigory

[IvanP]

Hi,

I'd like to present here some information as are the tape dimensions, tape and head movement speeds... Anybody can make own conclusions.

_______________DV__________________D8_____________ __Hi8
hor.res : ______500 rows____________500 rows_________400 rows
audio : __________digital(16/12 bits PCM)____________analog (FM)
audio dub. : ___Yes_________________No_______________No
FireWire : _____25 Mb/s_____________25 Mb/s__________-
Tape width : ___6.35mm______________8mm______________8mm
Tape size : ____125x78x14.6(DV)_____95x62.5x15_______95x62.5x1 5
[mm]_________66x48x12.2(miniDV)
Head speed : ___9000 rot/min________4500 rot/min_____1500 rot/min
Tape speed : ___18.831 mm/s_________28.695 mm/s______20.051 mm/s
Track width : __10mm________________16.34mm__________34.4mm

In source of this data was not noticed if it's for PAL or NTSC. But I suppose it's for PAL because it was in European magazine.


Ivan

[This message has been edited by IvanP (edited 15 October 1999).]

[Grigory]

Ivan,
Thanks for info.
As far as I know, the tape speed and datarate value is equal for PAL and NTSC.

PAL models can play and record NTSC via DV as well. They also can generate PAL or NTSC 4.43 analog from NTSC DV or analog video tape source.

Caution: if you try to use PAL D8 camcorder for NTSC DV editing, Canopus DV Raptor will show NTSC in monochrome in overlay window. Only NTSC 3.58 is supported for color decoding.

NTSC 4.43 video is displayed in color on multisystem TV.

Grigory

[fluggo99]

Hey, guys! Just thought I'd bring my own research into this:

Auto-shutoff

The Sony D8 camcorders do not shut off in VTR mode.

And though I haven't checked, I think removing the tape from the camcorder turns off auto-shutoff. Besides, you can just insert any old tape and hit record to keep it going while you're filming.

D8 format vs. DV format

Same thing. Different tapes, same format. 4:1:1 NTSC, 4:2:0 PAL, 25 Mbps, etc. Check out <a href="http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-tech.html">http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-tech.html</a>.

I personally don't mind using a D8 for now. I like having timecode, digital I/O, and bragging rights to those who bought the much more expensive stuff and didn't have to. That's the whole point of this site, isn't it? If you guys had the money to buy everything you wanted, why would you use RR's?

[fluggo99]

Hey, guys! Just thought I'd bring my own research into this:

Auto-shutoff

The Sony D8 camcorders do not shut off in VTR mode.

And though I haven't checked, I think removing the tape from the camcorder turns off auto-shutoff. Besides, you can just insert any old tape and hit record to keep it going while you're filming.

D8 format vs. DV format

Same thing. Different tapes, same format. 4:1:1 NTSC, 4:2:0 PAL, 25 Mbps, etc. Check out <a href="http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-tech.html">http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-tech.html</a>.

I personally don't mind using a D8 for now. I like having timecode, digital I/O, and bragging rights to those who bought the much more expensive stuff and didn't have to. That's the whole point of this site, isn't it? If you guys had the money to buy everything you wanted, why would you use RR's?