Whats the difference between DV video over 1394, and video captured using a video capture card?
Most of the high-resolution video capture cards on the market use MJPEG compression. The less you compress the video, the better it looks, but the higher the sustained data rate you need. At compression under 6:1 (over 3000 kilobytes/sec) most people will think the video looks as good as the original, but in reality, it will be slightly lower quality. The video will have very slight artifacts and image loss. In contrast, the DV spec is a 720×480 image size, at roughly a 5:1 compression. More accurately, it is compressed at a constant throughput of 3,600 kilobytes per second which averages out to 5:1 compression. Quality in. Quality out. What makes DV so special is that when you capture DV footage to your hard drive via 1394, the DV video on your hard drive is an exact digital copy of the original footage. There is no loss. Every 1394 card delivers the exact same DV-quality output. When choosing a 1394 card, there is no video quality debate regardless of the CODEC (compression method) u
