This year marks the 30th anniversary of when Sony introduced MiniDV, a digital home movie format aimed at consumers and hobbyists that changed amateur videos forever. It was truly a transitional medium, recording 60 minutes of virtually uncompressed digital video data at 500 lines of resolution onto a tape cassette roughly the size of a matchbox. Despite the linear-style playback and shuttling of the tapes, what made it gradually grow in popularity was its ability to transfer the footage into a powerful IEEE-1394/FireWire -equipped computer without the need for expensive analog video capture hardware you'd need with the other home video formats of the time.
The first such camcorder to support it was Sony's DCR-VX1000, a mid-range 3-CCD camcorder with a range of features that proved especially popular with skateboarders. Soon single-CCD consumer MiniDV camcorders hit the market, often small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, making it way more ideal for home movies.
As for computers being able to import and edit MiniDV footage, originally with Macs you'd need a PCI FireWire card (Mac-compatible) for use with the mid-to-late 1990s PowerMacs, and then you'd need the software, most of it being largely meant for professionals and hobbyists (such as the original Adobe Premiere and Digital Origin's EditDV), though there was the fairly limited Avid Cinema for the budding home videographer. It wasn't until 1999 when Apple came out with the blue-and-white PowerMac G3 tower with FireWire ports built in where it began to become a common peripheral connection on Macs, especially when later on the iMac G3 had FireWire circuitry added and was sold as the "iMac DV", including iMovie pre-loaded so consumers with MiniDV cameras could start editing their footage out of the box and easily!
Throughout the 2000s, Macs were often a go-to choice for people shooting and editing MiniDV footage, though it can also be done on Windows with the right hardware and software. But camcorder manufacturers and codec developers were aware that MiniDV was pretty much a transitional medium, as they knew in the future people would be able to record digital video onto a hard drive or some other solid state memory, but back in the 1990s it just wasn't practical. And even when the first such tapeless camcorders hit the scene in the 2000s, they often recorded in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format that was really compressed and inferior in quality to MiniDV... at least until around 2009-2010 when it was now possible for camcorder manufacturers to make tapeless digital camcorders whose H.264 or AVCHD video footage finally matched or even surpassed the high-definition version of MiniDV (HDV) in terms of quality, leading to MiniDV camcorders finally being discontinued.
Indeed, today's video recording devices have numerous advantages over MiniDV, such as no more real-time capture (this is a big one!), along with the even better recording quality, and you don't need to have FireWire or Thunderbolt circuitry to import the video footage (some higher-end camcorders have a direct Thunderbolt connection, though).
But sometimes I like to still do little "throwback" projects where I shoot something in MiniDV or even HDV, and edit it on one of my older Macs.
Any comments?
The first such camcorder to support it was Sony's DCR-VX1000, a mid-range 3-CCD camcorder with a range of features that proved especially popular with skateboarders. Soon single-CCD consumer MiniDV camcorders hit the market, often small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, making it way more ideal for home movies.
As for computers being able to import and edit MiniDV footage, originally with Macs you'd need a PCI FireWire card (Mac-compatible) for use with the mid-to-late 1990s PowerMacs, and then you'd need the software, most of it being largely meant for professionals and hobbyists (such as the original Adobe Premiere and Digital Origin's EditDV), though there was the fairly limited Avid Cinema for the budding home videographer. It wasn't until 1999 when Apple came out with the blue-and-white PowerMac G3 tower with FireWire ports built in where it began to become a common peripheral connection on Macs, especially when later on the iMac G3 had FireWire circuitry added and was sold as the "iMac DV", including iMovie pre-loaded so consumers with MiniDV cameras could start editing their footage out of the box and easily!
Throughout the 2000s, Macs were often a go-to choice for people shooting and editing MiniDV footage, though it can also be done on Windows with the right hardware and software. But camcorder manufacturers and codec developers were aware that MiniDV was pretty much a transitional medium, as they knew in the future people would be able to record digital video onto a hard drive or some other solid state memory, but back in the 1990s it just wasn't practical. And even when the first such tapeless camcorders hit the scene in the 2000s, they often recorded in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format that was really compressed and inferior in quality to MiniDV... at least until around 2009-2010 when it was now possible for camcorder manufacturers to make tapeless digital camcorders whose H.264 or AVCHD video footage finally matched or even surpassed the high-definition version of MiniDV (HDV) in terms of quality, leading to MiniDV camcorders finally being discontinued.
Indeed, today's video recording devices have numerous advantages over MiniDV, such as no more real-time capture (this is a big one!), along with the even better recording quality, and you don't need to have FireWire or Thunderbolt circuitry to import the video footage (some higher-end camcorders have a direct Thunderbolt connection, though).
But sometimes I like to still do little "throwback" projects where I shoot something in MiniDV or even HDV, and edit it on one of my older Macs.
Any comments?
