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Digital Video (DV) is a digital video format launched in 1994, and, in its smaller tape form factor MiniDV, has since become a standard for home and semiprofessional video production; it is sometimes used for professional purposes as well, such as filmmaking and electronic news gathering. The DV specification (originally known as the Blue Book, current official name IEC 61834) defines both the codec and the tape format. Features include intraframe compression for uncomplicated editing, a standard interface for transfer to non-linear editing systems (FireWire, also known as IEEE 1394), and good video quality, especially compared to earlier consumer analog formats such as 8 mm, Hi8 and VHS-C. DV now enables filmmakers to produce movies inexpensively, and is strongly associated with independent film and citizen journalism.

There have been some variants on the DV standard, most notably Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO formats targeted at professional use. Sony's consumer Digital8 format is another variant, which is similar to DV but recorded on Hi8 tape. Other formats such as DVCPRO50 utilize DV25 encoders running in parallel.

MiniDV tapes can also be used to record a high-definition format called HDV in cameras designed for this codec, which differs significantly from DV on a technical level as it uses MPEG-2 compression. MPEG-2 is more efficient than the compression used in DV, in large part due to inter-frame/temporal compression. This allows for higher resolution at bitrates similar to DV. On the other hand, the use of inter-frame compression can cause motion artifacts and complications in editing. Nonetheless, HDV is being widely adopted for both consumer and professional purposes and is supported by many editing applications using either the native HDV format or intermediary editing codecs.

Technical standards

Before compression

To avoid aliasing, optical low pass filtering is necessary (although not necessarily implemented in all camera designs). Essentially, blurry glass is used to add a small blur to the image. This prevents high-frequency information from getting through and causing aliasing. Low-quality lenses can also be considered a form of optical low pass filtering.

Before arriving at the codec compression stage, light energy hitting the sensor is transduced into analog electrical signals. These signals are then converted into digital signal by an analog to digital converter (ADC or A/D). This signal is then processed by a digital signal processor (DSP) or custom ASIC and undergoes the following processes:

Read more at Wikipedia.org