HDV is a consumer high-definition video format that was developed by a consortium of manufacturers: JVC, Sony, Canon and Sharp. make up this consortium. These companies proposed the basic format specification in July of 2003. HDV is a 19-megabit-per-second MPED-2 transport stream that records to existing standard DV format digital video cassettes. The transport stream interface conforms to IEEE 1394, better known as FireWire. Essentially, HDV is the recording and playback of high-definition video on a DV cassette tape.

DV is a high-resolution digital video format used with video cameras and camcorders. The standard uses DCT to compress the pixel data and is an okay form of compression. The resulting video is transferred from the recording device via a FireWire cable (IEEE 1394). FireWire is a high-speed serial bus capable of transferring data up to 50 MB/sec.

AVCHD Short for Advance Video Codec High Definition, this format was introduced by Sony and Panasonic. It uses MPEG-4 H.264 encoding. AVCHD is still in its infancy, with video editing software applications slowly adding AVCHD compatibility. Blu-ray players will eventually be capable of playing back AVCHD discs.

All of these formats have their strengths and weaknesses. The question of which one is better or which one to use will vary depending upon your need. For example, if you are looking to archive some home movies, then what you may want to think about is compressing the video using MPEG-1, which will be a nice way of placing it on a VideoCD. Making it into a VideoCD will ensure that it will last a lot longer than your tapes. The problem is: what was the source format? Was it VHS or 8mm or Hi8, etc. The better the source format, the easier it is to use MPEG-1, as the quality will not degrade too much. If the source format is something like VHS that already has some years, you may want to consider using a better format to compress your video with. On the other hand, if you are making a student film, for example, you should be using a digital medium to begin with. This will ensure the least amount of degradation of the video. Being able to transfer your video using a FireWire cable is the best way to transfer from camcorder to computer. If you plan on making a small video that you can email to someone else or place on your Web site, I would definitely consider using DivX or QuickTime, as I have found these to offer the best quality.

The most popular thing to do nowadays is to burn home movies and student films or any kind of video to DVD format. The biggest problem is compatibility; I have found that some DVDs I have burned work on some DVD players, while on others they do not. If it is not a professional production and you want to share what you shot, you can always choose a format such as .avi, QuickTime, or DivX and burn it to a CD that way. Those who receive your CD can then save it or play it directly from the CD, as long as they have a compatible player (such as DivX, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player) on their machines. Finally, all of this is subjective; it will come down to many factors that go beyond the scope of this article, and in the end, trial and error will often yield the best results.

John Devcic is a freelance writer and videographer.