DV picture quality and Digital picture benefits - What's the big deal?

Some enhanced features of the DV format are not necessarily derived from its being digital:

• With 500 lines of resolution, DV rivals the BetaCam professional analog format - true broadcast quality! but that is the least important aspect of DV.
• Digital picture also means a TBC (Time Base corrector) must be included to generate the image from the recorded data. The TBC makes the picture rock stable! Now that is a great change from analog! Although recent Hi8 models came with an internal TBC also...
• Something that no domestic format like S-VHS or Hi8 could come close to mach the DV format is color resolution. A simple test: recording an image like the cover of a book with red letters on black background showed the big difference between DV and Hi8. On the Hi8 playback, the red from within the letters spread all over the black background, like a kid that finds it difficult to paint within the boundary lines of a picture... On the Dv playback, the color stayed within the letters boundaries! This important feature is associated with higher color bandwidth, not the digital character of the recording process!

You could say that if the three mentioned aspects, as important as they are, where the only benefits of DV, then its not worth the big deal. and you will be right. professional analog formats give you all these benefits too.

So what is so good about digital recording?

The infinite no-loss generations is the only feature that separates digital recording from analog. If you edit your footage, you will be able to create an edited-master and an infinite number of identical copies!

Before DV, you had to take your first generation camera master, edit it to a second generation edit-master, and than, to keep the master in good shape and not to ware it down while making many copies, you would make a distribution master (or masters) - a third generation copy, before reaching the final result - a fourth generation distribution copy!!! even if you kept your entire production on a Hi-Band format, and then distributed VHS cassettes, the generation loss was visible. With digital recording the 3rd generation distribution master is identical to the first generation (that is, if your entire editing process was a cut to cut digital with no analog video signals anywhere in the middle!

Actually, the big deal about DV is the combination of all the above at a low priced (compared with pofessional equipment, that is...) SMALL package, and putting it all in the average amateur enthusiast! (o.k., RICH enthusiast...)

DV picture is not perfect, however. Read about the problems with COMPRESSION

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