HD vs SD MiniDV tapes -whats the diff?

[chihuahua]

I have a Sony HC3E (High Definition Videocam). I have been alternating between the standard MiniDV tapes (in red plastic wrapper that sells for about $5 each) and Sony's High Def tape (in brown plastic wrapper that sells for about $21 each). Cant honestly say i see much of a difference upon playback on a HD LCD TV.
Whats the difference betw the SD and HD tapes?

As tapes do deteriorate over time I plan to back them up on Hard drives (these are also prone to crashing) and DVD's. How do i transfer a HD tape to a HD DVD format? Do i need special equipment/media? I currently have a Sony PS3 which doubles as a Blu-Ray dvd player.

Advice appreciated.

 

[tommon]

1st, HC3 is only in HDV format, not real HD yet. That's why you can record in DV tapes. The denser the tape the better it can hold the information (means it last longer), that's why no improvement in quality as the basic digital info / data is the same.

As for recording to HD DVD, most of the common in the market DVD burners cannot support the format yet. A deciated BluRay burner might be able to do the trick but it cost 3-4x more than the average DVD RAM +- DL burners. I'm not sure if the drive is your PS3 is really HD ready. However, you can still save the stuff in Mpeg 2 or HDV file format in DVDs.

 

[anakin0618]

standard MiniDV tapes (in red plastic wrapper that sells for about $5 each) and Sony's High Def tape (in brown plastic wrapper that sells for about $21 each).
Whats the difference betw the SD and HD tapes?

As tapes do deteriorate over time I plan to back them up on Hard drives (these are also prone to crashing) and DVD's. How do i transfer a HD tape to a HD DVD format? Do i need special equipment/media? I currently have a Sony PS3 which doubles as a Blu-Ray dvd player.

Hi chihuahua,

I hope the following can answer your question.

1. on the difference between the Sony SD and HD tape. Personnally I have used both tape too. Generally the quality and reliability of the HD tape is higher and the risk of the drop frame is much lesser than the SD tape. If the SD tape is reused for a few time the risk of the drop frame increased. From my experience I have not encounter any problem with using the Sony "SD" tape with HC3. And for important occasion I will use the Sony High Definition tape instead.

2. On transfering it to the PS3 blue ray disk. I have no experience on transfer it to the blue ray disk so can't answer your question.

3. Back up to DVD, what I did is that I will capture the footage in the HDV in the HDV's native MPEG-2 transport stream (m2t) files and save it in the DVD as a data file.

 

[engr]

anakin is correct. The HDV tapes are better quality and mainly serves to prevent dropouts (black frames). I have encountered some drop out from even Panasonic DV Master tapes even when they are new.

As for producing a Blueray or HD DVD disk. it is really matured at the moment as the drives have just started to appear. What you can do is to convert the tapes to m2t format. When the NLE supports blueray or HD DVD you can process them then.

Some editors would edit the m2t, can render it back as m2t to tapes for storage until the technology is winning. At the moment, no one can tell who will win this war bet Toshiba n Sony.

 

[ywh]

The Panasonic AYDVM63AMQ is very recommended and I bought a box of 50 from Hai Chew. They are more archival than normal 3-dollar DV tapes and Panasonic have claimed them to have less dropouts from Sony's DVCAM tapes. Another forum has mentioned that the Canon tape that comes with the XL-H1 is the Panasonic AMQ rebranded.

Regardless of which tape you use, just dun mix brands. They diff lubricants will give you more problems with dropouts than inferior tape ( I cant think of any actually) used consistently. If budget allows, get the Panasonic AMQ at about 12 bucks a piece...still a huge savings over the HDV tapes.

 

[lwm]

I read that you can transfer a recorded HD video to a normal DVD disc, and play back on a PS3. The video is in HD, but the DVD can only hold about 20min footage due to the higher storage needed by HD.