On Sun, 24 Sep 2000 12:13:20 GMT, JKE wrote:

>I tried to find a FAQ for DV camcorder but no luck.
>
>My S-VHS camcorder just broke down and I'm looking into digital video.
>Is DV a lossless format for video? Hi8 is not, I've heard.

By "lossless", it is meant that DV is encoded into digital
format within the camcorder and before trasfer of the signal
to tape - this has the advantage that transfers and copies
can be made that are exact copies (barring tape dropouts)
of the original, and when editing, unmodified parts of
the edit are unchanged (the quality of modified parts,
like transitions, filtered footage, etc. depends on the
quality of the DV-CODEC used).

>I'd like to edit & copy clips, add sound etc. but each editing step in S-SHS
>degraded the quality and I don't want that anymore.
>Is the resolution (etc. picture quality) OK for broadcast (PAL)?

Much DV is now used in broadcast...

>I'm looking into Matrox RT2000. Is it compatible with PAL systems?

Dunno...

>What are good DV camcorders? I need to do some commercial TV ads (real simple).
>I'd the the camcorder double as home-video camcorder so size is one factor.

See the camcorder reviews on my web page (listed near the
end of the "I babble" index) - all good 3-chip Mini-DV
camcorders but the large/heavy JVC DV500 are covered,
critically, with frame-grabs...).

>IS DV
>just a generic terms for different formats of digital video.

It can be - "Mini-DV", "D8", "DV-Cam" are the same signal
format, but other formats also fit under the "DV"
umbrella...

>I don't mind
>transferring the clips to computer but I don't want quality degradation. That why
>I'm looking into digital format now. I'm a newbie and really don't know how DV,
>MiniDV, Digital 8, Hi8 etc. differ.

Of the above, "Hi-8" is an analogue format, the others are
similar to each other in that generation losses are minimal.
It sounds like you would be most interested in one of the
better medium-sized 3-chip Mini-DV camcorders as the best
compromise between quality and price/size/weight for your
purposes - see the reviews for more...