What's the story with no more MiniDV

[Ronnie]

I am happy with my D8 and am not looking to change it out, nor am a I concerned about finding tapes for it. I suppose in a few more years most of us will be making the move the HDV though I am not rushing into that. I am still in the SDV world on all accounts. By the time I am ready, both the software and the hardware will be there. I am hoping for flash memory as the media. Its capicity has grown about 1000 times over the past eight years.

But, the replacement of mini DV with mini DVD camcorders does makes me wonder what Adobe has in store for Ver 4 or 5. I know their forum is a user to user forum, but come on. I bet it is also a major source of marketing information. A quick survey of its contents and one can see that the majority of questions and complaints come from some type of mpeg issue. With the majority of new comcorders recording mpegs or vobs, shouldn't the software follow. Or is Adobe going to be happy with letting all those potential customers start using MyDVD or some other software. This would leave just us die hard D-25 (be it mini DV of D8)users riding their software to the grabe. I doubt it.

[Steve Grisetti]

I love my D8 too, Ronnie.

I'm not sure what's going to happen, however, if the market abandons DV and goes to MPEGs instead. It's unlikely Premiere Elements will evolve to effectively edit them, since it's built (like most higher-end PC and Mac-based editing apps) around the DV-AVI (or DV-MOV) workflow.

It would take a total rethinking of the software to make it an efficient MPEG editor. There are a number of apps out there that do use an MPEG workflow, and the results with MPEG source files is very good -- but, currently, no "serious" editor is built on it.

So something's going to have to give. Either miniDVs will need to make a comeback (I hope) or computer-based editing is going to have to do a major reboot.

[deasley]

It looks like all manufacturers use CCD except Sony, who uses CMOS. After just a quick look, it appears that CMOS does not operate as well in low light as CCD.

Am I correct in this observation? Are there any advantages/disadvantages to either type of video pickup technology?

Thanks

[Paul LS]

It is not only Sony who have moved/moving to CMOS... others manufacturers have started to move. All of Sony's top end camcorders now use CMOS, Canon's latest releases are also using CMOS. Most HDV camcorders are now using CMOS.
The latest CMOS chips (2nd generation) are much better in low light as seen in the latest HDV camcorders.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I have a CMOS based HD camera and the Neat Video noise reduction plug in works really well on reducing low light noise.

[harmo]

It seems I may have lucked out about 6 months ago when I bought my miniDV camera without having a CLUE what I was getting. I bought it because I was going to be in a somewhat remote area and liked the idea of being able to film...err, video...as many hours as I wanted and took lots of the inexpensive tapes along.