High-speed and DV video

Digital video cameras (DV)

Consumer camcorders (Sony, Panasonic, Canon, etc.) apply to this standard. They usually come with built-in lenses, batteries and a digital tape.

These digital video cameras compress the video stream with a MJPEG algorithm and the required band width is approx. 3.5 MB/s (=26 Mbit/s). They can transfer this compressed stream via Firewire (IEEE-1394) or save it to the tape. Since there is no further analog to digital conversion all copies of this video stream have the same quality. You can record to tape or directly to the computer, transfer the video back to the tape and read it again: Data will be identical in all cases.

The user cannot modify or bypass the compression algorithm.

The frame rate is limited to 25 (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC) frames per second which can be separated in fields ("odd" and "even" lines of the image), resulting in 50 (or 59.94) different images per second.

Image size is 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC).
Some time ago JVC offered their DVL-9x00 series. These cameras were able to double the frequency by using only half of the vertical or horizontal resolution.

Although the Firewire standard allows up to 63 devices to share the same bus, many cameras do not fully apply to this standard and will not cooperate when connected to the same bus.

Users who want to capture more than one camera have to use multiple Firewire systems (PCI or PCMCIA adapters).

Recent models are able to cooperate on the same bus. In this case several cameras can use the same bus (400 Mbit/s).
Typical prices are US$ 1500-2000 per camera.