What does Mean?

Mini DV is a type of camcorder format that records digital video and audio.

The digital AV signals are recorded on a mini-DV cassette tape.

The word mini is attributed to the size of the cassette. At the time of its launch, it was the smallest video cassette.

Mini-DV Cassette

The cassette has a length of 2.6 inches, a width of 1.9 inches, and a height of x 0.5 inches

The tape width is a mere 0.25 inches 0r about 6mm.

The tape thickness is about itself is only 0.25 inches.

Depending on the mini-DV cassette and recording settings video could be recorded from 60 (SP) to 90 (LP) minutes.

The size of the mini-DV cassette allowed manufacturers smaller size camcorders and video cameras.

Firewire Port

The main attraction of a mini-DV camcorder or video camera is it comes with a Firewire port.

With this IEEE 1394 connection, digital video can be captured directly into a computer that has a Firewire port through video editing software.

How Many GB is a Mini DV tape?

The mini-DV codec uses a 5:1 compression ratio. Full resolution video takes up about 1GB per five minutes. As such, a mini-DV cassette can store about 13 GB of DV-quality audiovisual data per hour of recording.

What Resolution is mini-DV?

The mini-DV resolution is 720 x 480 pixels (NTSC) and 720×576 (PAL) with interlaced scanning.

Audio is recorded at different levels of sampling with the best quality being 48 0000Hz at 16 bits.

The horizontal resolution of mini-DV when viewed on television is around 500 lines, compared to VHS’s 240 lines and Hi-8’s and S-VHS’s 400 lines.