I was wondering if the consumer-level DV cameras (like mini-DV and Digital8) are "broadcast quality"? Any thoughts?

Doug

[Feathers]

There's a big difference between video-8 and Mini-DV for starters.

Mini-DV shot on a three-chip camera is very very close to BetaSP picture-wise, but is BetaSP still the definition of "Broadcast"? What about Digibeta?? Mini-DV has unlocked audio so the sound side of things is definitely NOT broadcast!

In a pinch you can say that Mini-DV is broadcast-able but not broadcast quality as that definition is improving all the time. Mini-DV is better than the boadcast quality of say 1985 but not 1999. Ok?

PS - Er Video-8 isn't!

[bradr]

If it's not, it's pretty darn close. I created two commercials for my company using a MiniDV camcorder and iMovie. Both are airing weekly on a local TV station.

i contacted a local news co. a while ago about what they defined as broadcast quality. they said that the old definition of was shot to hell. they take pretty much anything nowadays.

[miketaylor]

Dark's about right. I've worked in broadcast TV for 15 years and the old definition of "broadcast quality" has gone west. Good job too. What matters is the subject and the effect you're trying to get. In the past I've had engineers in TV news sucking in their cheeks and saying "oooooh, can't broadcast that... no way....". Even this year as I fed back pictures from the floods in Mozambique, halfway thru the feed the MCR engineer in London stopped recording and asked for a (very expensive) refeed because the "chroma" was "way off". We just re-fed it without any tweaks and he claimed our adjustments had done the job and it was now "broadcast quality". The point is that quality is all relative - no-one worth their salt would refuse to broadcast shakey, grainy pictures with crap sound and terrible framing IF they happen to be the only pictures of an historic or tragic moment (like the ONLY moving pictures of the recent Concorde crash in France which I think were just about shown on every major TV news programme on every channel around the world.)

I'd have to chip in with Mike and Dark. There was a time that broadcast quality meant that the vertical interval would lock and that the image kept its chroma (color.) Today even consomer VHS can do that. My D8 camcorder is literally 5 times better to the naked eye as 3/4 Umatic that was all the news gatherers used prior to Betacam (or who remembers MII?)
Now the stuff we are getting on DV and D8 is certainly good enough. Have we progressed or regressed?