Which is better for editing: DV, M-JPEG, MPEG-2, or DV50?
Ahh, now that’s the question! And with systems like DraCo’s Casablanca, Matrox’s DigiSuite LE, or Pinnacle’s ReelTime that work in M-JPEG but offer 1394 I/O; or the Matrox RT2000 that offers either 25 megabit DV or 25 megabit MPEG-2; or the DigiSuite DTV and LX that allow any combination of DV25, DV50 (DTV only), and MPEG-2 up to 50 megabits… what’s going on??? DV is good when you’ve shot in DV and stay in DV on disk: there’s no transcoding required. DV is ideally suited to desktop editing because the data rates are viable on garden-variety UDMA disks and controllers; you can assemble a perfectly usable DV editing system for under US$2000 and produce excellent, broadcast-quality work (well, technically, at least; despite what the manufacturers would have you believe, no format or software guarantees to make you a creative genius). If you’re shooting DV, why not stay in DV all the way? The sweet spot for this format (to borrow Panasonic’s DVCPRO slogan) is “faster, better, cheaper”, a
