D-5 is a professional digital video

Digital video

Digital video is a type of digital recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal.The terms camera, video camera, and camcorder are used interchangeably in this article.- History :...

 format introduced by Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

 in 1994. Like Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

's D-1

D1 (Sony)

D-1 is an SMPTE digital recording video standard, introduced in 1986 through efforts by SMPTE engineering committees. It started as a Sony and Bosch - BTS product and was the first major professional digital video format.- Format :...

 (8-bit), it is an uncompressed digital component system (10bit), but uses the same half-inch tapes as Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

's digital composite D-3

D3 video

D-3 is an uncompressed composite digital video videocassette format invented at NHK, and introduced commercially by Panasonic in 1991 to compete with Ampex's D-2. It uses half-inch metal particle tape at 83.88 mm/s . Like D-2, the video signal is sampled at four times the color subcarrier...

 format. A 120 min D-3 tape will record 60 min in D-5/D-5 HD mode.
D-5 standard definition decks can be retrofitted to record high definition with the use of an external HD input/output box. The HD deck conversion does not allow for any error correction that exists on standard definition recordings, as the full bandwidth of the tape is required for the HD recording.

D-5 HD

D-5 HD uses standard D-5 video tape cassettes to record HD material, using an intra-frame compression with a 4:1 ratio. D-5 HD supports the 1080 and the 1035 interlaced line standards at both 60 Hz and 59.94 Hz field rates, all 720 progressive line standards and the 1080 progressive line standard at 24, 25 and 30 frame rates. Four 48 kHz 24-bit PCM audio channels, or eight 48 kHz 20-bit channels, are also supported. D-5 runs at different data rates for different formats (taken from the hardware manual for the AJ-HD3700B:

• 323 Mbit/s (1080/59.94i/8CH, 720/59.94p/8CH, 480/59.94i/8CH)
• 319 Mbit/s (576/50i/8CH)
• 300 Mbit/s (1080/59.94i/4CH, 720/59.94p/4CH, 480/59.94i/4CH)
• 258 Mbit/s (1080/23.98p/8CH, 1080/24p/8CH)
• 269 Mbit/s (1080/50i/8CH, 1080/25p/8CH, 576/50i/4CH)

HD material is often captured for post production of film projects, whereby the D-5 HD scanning equipment is cheaper by the hour than a full resolution 2K film scan. Digital HD tape photographed movies such as Star Wars Episode II

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones is a 2002 American epic space opera film directed by George Lucas and written by Lucas and Jonathan Hales. It is the fifth film to be released in the Star Wars saga and the second in terms of the series' internal chronology...

, Superman Returns

Superman Returns

Superman Returns is a 2006 superhero film directed by Bryan Singer. It is the fifth and final installment in the original Superman film series and serves as a alternate sequel to Superman and Superman II by ignoring the events of Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace .The film stars...

, and Miami Vice

Miami Vice (film)

Miami Vice is a 2006 American crime drama film about two Miami police detectives, Crockett and Tubbs, who go undercover to fight drug trafficking operations. The film is a loose adaptation of the 1980s TV series of the same name, written, produced, and directed by Michael Mann...

often record to a 1080p format, however, these were mostly produced using the competing HDCAM

HDCAM

HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is an High-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440×1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes to later models...

 and HDCAM SR formats from Sony. As of 2010, no D-5 HD camcorders have been offered for sale. Panasonic instead markets DVCPRO HD and P2

P2 (storage media)

P2 is a professional digital recording solid-state memory storage media format introduced by Panasonic in 2004, and especially tailored to electronic news-gathering applications. It features tapeless recording of DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO25, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO-HD, or AVC-Intra streams on a solid-state...

camcorders for field production of 720P or 1080i and 1080p images.

In 2007 Panasonic introduced an add-on box (AJ-HDP2000) that allows a standard D-5 VTR to encode 2K (2048 x 1080) resolution material with 4:4:4 color space onto D-5 tape using the industry standard JPEG2000 wavelet-based compression.