The DVD has been around for most of since 1996. With a storage capacity of 4.7 gigs there are 2 ways in which most of us use DVDs. The first and most common is a video disk. Using special software a menu is created that allows playback of your movie on either a DVD player or a computer running DVD software. (VLC is a common free program). While 4.7 gigs seems like a lot of information in the video work that translates to approximately 2 hours of footage at a moderate data rate of 4-6 mb per second. Of course, you can get more footage than 2 hours but to do so it would require you to reduce the quality of the footage in direct proportion to space. In other words, the more footage, the worse the quality. 2 hours is the agreed upon quality tipping point.

The main problem with DVDs used as video disks is that once the DVD has been formated to work in a DVD player it can only be used for that purpose. You would not be able to copy the footage to your computer without using special software to "rip" the data. This is a time consuming process that more often than not produced poor results.

The second way in which DVDs are used is a storage medium. Again 4.7 gigs of data can be stored on a DVD. This is great if you have very little footage. However 1 hour of standard digital footage is aproximately 13 gigs. In effect, you can only get about 20 minutes of uncompressed video on a DVD as data.

In the past few years a new type of DVD has come on the market. Dual layer DVDs allow you to store much more than a standard DVD. Up to 8.5 gis per disc, compard toeh 4.7 gigs that is availabe on a regular single layer DVD.

While the DVD has been the most dominant disk format for the past decade in 2006 Sony and Toshiba had a battle royal to decide which larger capacity disk would take over from DVD. HD DVD and Bluray both had one thing to offer. More space. A BluRay disk can hold up to 50gb of date while a HD DVD can store up to 30 gb. That means that more video can be stored. In other words, if you do not have to compress your footage down to 4.7 gigs, you can get higher quality and better video.

BluRay won. Mostly due to the sales of the Sony Playstation which included a BluRay player and the ability to play BluRay DVDs. The irony is that after nearly 6 years BluRay has not completely taken over the video DVD market. Production of regular DVD still dominate, with around 75% of DVD sales. The main reason is that it takes a very long time to burn BluRay disks. They are still quite expensive in comparison to DVDs, and hard drives have dropped in price so much that in many cases purchasing a new portable hard drive makes more sense both on standpoint of data safety and cost.

Since 1995, MiniDV tapes have been a popular format of video storage. Standard MiniDV tapes can hold up to an hours’ worth of video and audio, or ninety minutes of reduced quality audio & video. Later, specialty tapes were released with the capability of holding two hours of quality footage. And with the release of HD MiniDV tapes, we can now record and save high quality 1080i video. If properly stored in a cool, dry environment, MiniDV tapes can be a quality, re-recordable video storage format.

MiniDV became extremely popular on the independent film circuit as the tapes were low in price, but high in quality, enabling anyone to produce a movie inexpensively. But with the introduction of DSLR cameras and the SD cards that work with them, MiniDV tapes and cameras are on the decline. Digital video being better because it can store more audio/video, be easily viewed, stored, shared and edited.

Problems can occur with all types of MiniDV tapes if stored in poor quality conditions. Over years of degradation and dust accumulation, the audio and video recorded on the tapes can become grainy and faded. This is why many filmmakers are transferring their tapes to DVD or into digital .MOV/.AVI files. With digital files or DVD, the video has a better chance of staying high quality for longer, and also makes it easier to share, and edit the files.

One way to store high definition video is by using an Advanced Video Coding High Definition format, or AVCHD. Developed through a joint effort by Panasonic and Sony, this format was introduced in 2006 primarily for consumer HD camcorders. This high quality storage format is used both by professionals and amateurs alike. Recently in 2011, an AVCHD Progressive format was developed to include 1080-line 50 frame/sec and 60-frame/sec modes, and stereoscopic video (3D).

Not only can AVCHD hold both audio and video, but has the capability to hold information similar to DVDs such as: menu navigations, subtitles and slide shows. Similar to DVDs, the menu navigation features allows you to select recorded video from an intro screen. You can playback AVCHD video using direct playback, AVCHD disc, Blu-ray disc, AVCHD memory cards, USB playback or computer playback.

Microsoft DV format information goes here