Tape recording (HDV)

Choose a Canon HD camcorder that captures movies to tape and you’ll be recording in the popular High Definition Video (HDV) format.

HDV captures extremely high quality HD movies to HDV or MiniDV tapes – picture quality is so good that many professional level camcorders also shoot on HDV, including Canon’s own X series camcorders.

HDV works by using sophisticated compression technology to shrink the huge amount of video data that an HD movie contains. With no compromises made in picture quality, you can store as much HD footage as the tape allows (usually just over an hour).

HDV offers several other key benefits. Because it uses tapes for recording, it’s very low cost. HDV is also perfect if you’re a keen video editor – footage and audio are easily transferred to a computer via a single Firewire cable. Virtually all popular PC and Mac video editing programs are compatible with the HDV standard, too.

Clearing things up
When choosing an HD camcorder or television, you may notice that two standards exist – HD Ready 720 and Full HD 1080. They refer to the number of lines of information in the image: the Full HD standard offers the highest quality.

Of course, every movie recorded using HD looks great – but it is worth remembering that all Canon HD camcorders record using the Full HD standard, delivering the highest resolution that an HDTV can display.

Compatible models:

HV30

XH A1

XH G1

XL H1

XL H1A

XL H1s

“HDV” and the “HDV” logo are trademarks of Sony Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC).

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