DV

Abbreviation for Digital Video. Digital Video is a format for digitizing and storage of video images. DV is also commonly referred to as DVC, which stands for Digital Video Cassette. The format uses 4:1:1 sampling, 5:1 compression, and a 25 Mega-bit (3.1 Mega-byte) data rate, and records to 1/4″ cassette tapes. What do those figures mean? The sampling figure (4:1:1) refers to the sampling rates of various components of the video signal (we’ll cover more about this in future inSync issues). The compression ratio is a generic figure for how much the data is compressed (as in lossy compression). Other digital video formats – ones that are not referred to as DV – use different sample rates (4:2:2, 4:4:4, etc.) and data compression ratios. A subset of the DV format known as MiniDV, which uses smaller cassettes, but is basically the same format, has become extremely popular in the consumer marketplace due to its combination of reasonably high quality (especially compared to inexpensive analog systems), low cost, and convenience. Once video is captured on a DV camera it is very easy to transfer it to a computer editing system via Firewire – no “video capture” card (and the accompanying process) is needed.