Have you ever wondered how much space is required for DV, HDV or HD media?  This can be a tricky question, because DV and HD is based on a fixed compression scheme and HDV is based on variable MPEG compression.

Keep in mind that HDV offers approximately 3 times better quality that DV.

DV uses 3.5 MB/sec

HDV uses 3.3 MB/sec

DVCPro HD (1080i 60) uses 13.9 MB/sec

So how is it possible that HDV uses less space than DV?  Well, this isn't always true, because it depends on the footage you are compressing.  HDV uses MPEG compression which is a variable compression format.  In general HDV takes up a smaller footprint than DV.  I find this to be quite amazing.  There are some drawbacks in that HDV requires a lot more processor power and longer render times than standard DV. 

Remember, this file size of HDV depends on the complexity of the footage. 

If you plan on working with full HD, notice the file size is roughly 4 times the size of DV or HDV.  That's a lot of bandwidth.  If you plan on working in full HD, make sure you have a high-speed drive array with a lot of storage.