GUIDE · 6 MIN READ

How to convert MiniDV tapes to MP4 (without losing quality)

Turning a MiniDV tape into an MP4 takes two steps: first you copy the tape onto a computer as a DV file, then you convert that file to MP4. The first step is the same for everyone. The second is where most of the quality is won or lost.

Step 1: copy the tape onto a computer

MiniDV is already digital, so copying it doesn't lose anything. You play the tape in a camcorder (or a DV deck), connect it to a computer with a FireWire cable (Sony calls it i.LINK), and record what comes out with capture software. The result is a .dv or .avi file with exactly what's on the tape.

Capturing runs in real time, so a 60-minute tape takes 60 minutes. Expect about 13 GB per hour of footage.

We go through cables, adapters and software in detail in How to get footage off a MiniDV camcorder.

Step 2: convert the DV file to MP4

A DV file is big and doesn't play well on phones or in browsers, so you convert it to MP4 (H.264), the format everything understands. This is where it goes wrong for most people, because DV video has three quirks that a quick conversion ignores:

It's interlaced. Each frame holds two half-pictures recorded a fiftieth of a second apart. Converted carelessly, anything moving gets comb-like jagged lines, or half the motion is thrown away. See Why old camcorder footage has jagged lines.
Its pixels aren't square. PAL DV is stored as 720×576 but is meant to be shown at 4:3. Played back as-is, the picture comes out slightly the wrong shape, so a good conversion resizes to square pixels (768×576 for PAL, 640×480 for NTSC).
It has 48 kHz audio (or 32 kHz on some cameras), which should be kept clean rather than squeezed.

What a good MP4 looks like

50p(60p for NTSC tapes) every field becomes a frame

768×576square pixels, true 4:3, no stretching

H.264 + AACplays on any phone, computer, YouTube or editor

Avoid conversions that stretch the picture to 16:9 widescreen, add black bars inside the video, or "upscale" with sharpening. They make the file bigger without adding detail that was never on the tape.

The easy way: dv2mp4

Upload your DV file to dv2mp4.com and we do step 2 for you: field-aware deinterlacing to 50p, square pixels and clean audio. You see a free preview of your own tape before paying anything.

The do-it-yourself way

If you're comfortable with the command line, the free tool ffmpeg can do a good conversion of a PAL DV file:

ffmpeg -i tape.dv -vf "bwdif=mode=send_field:parity=bff,scale=768:576:flags=lanczos,setsar=1" -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset slow -c:a aac -b:a 256k tape.mp4

For NTSC tapes use scale=640:480. The important part is mode=send_field, which turns every field into its own frame, and parity=bff, because DV records the lower field first.