Diesel

Got stumped by a mate asking my advice when buying a camcorder using this recording format!

I have found this out - "The system is based on its use of a sophisticated MPEG2 recording system. First-class digital video is recorded in MPEG2 with a data transfer rate of 12Mbps. Since MPEG2 has a bit-rate that is less than half that of the MiniDV or Digital8® format, MICROMV videos take up less hard drive space and are easier to manage. MPEG2's compression system allows for the use of much more compact media. It also sets a new standard in picture and audio quality, and enables quick PC-based non-linear editing using simple drag-and-drop techniques."

But half the bit rate theoretically does not make for better pics in my book - leads to contouring etc. Mind you MPEG 2 DVD's are great! Confused!

D

fast bloke

just uses more sophisticated compression - It is possible to compress an image without losing any detail, but this requires more processing power and usually takes longer. You can compress quickly with less power but you lose detail. Until recently you couldn't get technology powerful enough to carry out real time lossless compression at anything like a realistic cost. (I did my thesis in image processing in 1996 - At that point a dog boll*x PC (P200 with 16 MB of ram) would take about 2-3 minutes to carry out a lossless compression of 1 frame. Now it seems that MICROMV can do it in 0.02 seconds

Diesel

Thanks. That's quite amazing! Saw one Sony with 530 lines of res - not bad for a domestic camcorder at all!