Mini DV tapes are magnetic tapes that store video and audio using the DV format that stores digital video. There are various sizes of cassette but the size intended for consumers was the smallest and was called Mini DV.
The DV format uses a "lossy" compression method for storing video, however the quality is usually much higher of lower resolution analog tapes such as Video 8 or Hi 8.
Most Mini DV camcorders have a IEEE 1394 Firewire port to transfer the digital video to a computer without converting the footage to analog (and therfore losing quality).
Our service is ideal for customers who have old Mini DV cassette tapes but have no camera to play them on. We can digitally transfer the footage to a computer and then produce a DVD or MP4 file and ensure your footage will have the highest quality of footage available. Once you have your MP4 file, you can share the video on popular sites such as YouTube or Facebook, and a DVD can play on any DVD player.
We charge per video tape converted, rather than per hour of video tape, making it simple for you to calculate the cost of your order and set your budget.
Pixave also offer a full conversion service for NTSC tapes recorded on North American equipment (USA, Canada etc) and we can generate NTSC or PAL DVD's from your NTSC source material and MP4 files that will work on any TV.
PAL is a television broadcast standard used in the UK, it consists of 576 lines with 25 frames displayed per second. PAL was adopted by mostly european countries, though some countries such as France, adopted a slightly different version called SECAM.
NTSC is a television standard used the USA & Canada, it consists of 486 lines with 29.97 frames displayed per second. As the USA became popular for UK tourists, many consumers purchased NTSC camcorders or VHS tapes and could not play them in the UK. Manufacturers tweaked their players so that NTSC video tapes could be played on PAL TV's, but these were usually in poor quality.
DVD is an optical disk format, developed by Sony, Philips, Toshiba and Panasonic in the 90's. DVD's typically hold 4.7GB of data, approximately 2 hours of video. There are however, dual-layer DVD's that hold twice this amount, allowing upto 4 hours on a single disk. DVD's require most movies to be compressed in order to fit onto a disc, e.g. a 2 hour uncompressed movie could easily take up 40GB of data, and the only way to compress the movie down (and keep it the same length!) is to compress the movie, which in reality means that parts of every frame will need to be deleted. This sounds scary, however it's not as bad as it seems, if you imagine a scene such as a local football match, the difference between one frame and the next will be tiny, e.g. the sky and clouds will be the same, and so in theory all you need to record is the first frame, and then the differences from one frame to the next. This means that your choice of software you use to perform the compression is crucial and will make a dramatic difference to your final DVD quality.
MP4 is a digital video file that contains both video and audio. These files can be uploaded to cloud services such as Youtube and shared like any normal file. PC's and MAC's are normally bundled with software to play MP4 files, as are smart TV's, mobile phones and tablets.
Pixave are happy to provide you with the uncompressed digital movie file if required, it will however by very large, please contact us to discuss.
We'll convert any Mini DV cassette into a DVD, fully authored with a professional looking DVD menu for £15.
Video conversion pricesYou can of course contact us or use our online system to get a quote and place an order, then just send your tapes to us. We will take great care of your tapes.
How video conversion worksWant to share your Mini DV video tapes with your children ? Or are you having a wedding, perhaps a big birthday coming up and want to embarrass the lucky person ?
Why convert your videos?Share your converted tapes with the world through social media such as Youtube, Vimeo, Dropbox etc and let the world enjoy!
Sharing videos on social media
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