Mini DV cameras capture video footage in a digital format on cassettes. The footage can be imported from the cassettes to computers, but Windows PCs typically lack ports for direct connection. Importing raw footage from a Mini DV cassette to an Apple computer results in large file sizes around 15GB per hour of footage. Compressing the footage using lossy codecs reduces the file size but results in some loss of quality or artifacts. NARA recommends lossless or named lossy codecs and open formats like MOV, AVI or MXF for long-term preservation of archival video.