DV or DVCAM

By Dr Ivan B. Tonklemousse;  21 December, 2003
 
This is one of the most frequently asked questions and fortunately the answer is relatively straight forward:
 
PAL DV and DVCAM formats share an identical 4:2:0  25Mb/s (25 Mega bits per second) data stream, therefore in theory there can be no difference in the quality of images recorded by either format.
 
However, DVCAM tape runs around 33% faster and the tape heads record the data onto a physically wider (helical-scan) track on the tape - That's why a Small DVCAM Cassette has a running time of 40 minutes compared to 60 minutes on mini DV.
 
The effect of this is that the same data is spread across a larger tape area and therefore a higher number of magnetic particles within the tape.  This helps to reduce errors caused by drop-out which can be induced by minor tape imperfections.
 
Drop-out is almost always present when playing back anything recorded on magnetic tape, but its normally very cleverly concealed by drop-out compensation circuitry.
 
This means that in the real-world the difference is usually hard, if not impossible to see, but in reality, by definition DVCAM must be a slightly more robust format and that is a good thing, especially for critical applications. 
 
It's a typical example of "Better safe than sorry!"
 
If I had the choice between 2 otherwise identical camcorders, one DV only and the other DVCAM I'd take the DVCAM model every time!

Article kindly provided by www.creativevideo.co.uk VIP use this company for all our corporate video production uk hardware needs.