Saving, Sharing Videos On CD - Technology Tutorial

Computer Technology Review,  April, 2001  by Ron Hanafin

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"I think a lot of people really want to do this (capture and show personal videos),"' said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development for Pioneer New Media Technologies, at a recent Consumer Electronics Show. "I wanted to do this two years ago and I was frustrated. I said I'm not going to pay $5,000 for a recorder."

While Parsons was talking about using his firm's DVD recorders to copy a video to 4.7GB DVD media, consumers have actually been able to cost-effectively record and play back videos for more than a year.

The Secret?

Most of today's computers have the power and capacity to support video production. Digital camcorders are available with FireWire connectivity that simplifies downloading video to personal computers. Economical and user-friendly personal video production tools have become widely available. When you record DVD-quality MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video on a CD, it can be played on virtually any DVD-ROM drive or DVD player as well as computer-based CD-ROM drives. Products like Roxio's CD Creator and Toast, as well as a number of the video production tools, make it fast and easy to copy your videos onto CD-R and CD-RW media.

Why Video On CD?

There are a number of compelling reasons for businesses, institutions, and individuals to write video content onto CD media:

* CD-RW drives and CD-R/CD-RW media are very inexpensive and widely available.

* Most of the 26 million DVD-ROM drives in use in computers around the world will play CD-based video.

* Most of the 60 million DVD players in use around the globe will play CD-RW-based video.

* A large percentage of the 160 million computer-based CD-ROM drives in use will play CD-R-based video.

* Economical and easy-to-use video production tools are available that will allow users to store the finished video on VHS tape, DVD, CD, and send it across the Internet.

Video Standards, Capacity

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) defined the standards for compressing motion video and audio signals using DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) compression which provides a common world language for high-quality digital video.

MPEG-1 (White Book standard) was designed so VHS-quality video could play from a regular CD. The standard supports video coding with quality roughly equivalent to VHS videotape. Most graphics chips can scale the picture for full-screen playback; however, software-only half-screen playback is a useful trade-off. With MPEG-1, more than 70 minutes of good-quality video and audio can be stored on a single CD-ROM disc optimized for non-interlaced video.

MPEG-2, a related standard for coding video at higher data rate and in an interlaced format was developed to deliver HDTV or theater-quality video. MPEG-2 is optimized for the higher demands of broadcast, HDTV, and entertainment applications, including satellite broadcast and DVD-Video and is backward compatible with MPEG-1. MPEG-2 resolution is about twice that of VHS videotape. In addition, the standard supports features such as scalabiity and the ability to place pictures within pictures.

While many people look down on MPEG-1 quality, keep in mind that we have been viewing--and have been very satisfied with-VHS-based videos for years. More importantly, when the videos are stored on CD, they don't suffer from constant playback degradation and images don't deteriorate over time.

A standard 650MB CD will store about 30 minutes of DVD-quality video at 4Mbps. The higher-capacity 700MB CDs provide an additional 50MB of capacity. While this pales when compared to a DVD disc's 4.7GB 2-hour capacity, the cost of production and distribution is significantly less; and for many applications, 30 minutes is a very long video. Consider:

* sales training

* product, services, capabilities presentations

* HR, management presentations

* installation, maintenance, troubleshooting videos

* educational coursework

* sales presentations

* visual guided tours of real estate, vacation locations, business locations

* weddings, graduations, and other family celebrations

* commercial and video news release distribution

System Requirements

Apple computers have always had a multimedia focus. Some of the newer, more powerful computers from IBM, Compaq, Dell, and HP are also excellent, economical video production systems. In fact, almost any computer sold today is multimedia and video production-ready. Some enhancements may be required, but there is nothing standing in the way of using them to produce, view, and share personal and professional video on CDs.

You do need to make certain that your system is equipped with a good-quality video card and a sound card.

While you can get by with 64MB of memory, more is always better. With memory modules so inexpensive today, 128MB simplifies your job. 256MB of memory allows you to take advantage of advanced video editing you'll want to do once you become familiar with all of the things you can do in producing your video CDs.

Individuals with 20GB hard drives often feel they have massive storage capacity, but digital video consumes volumes of storage space, which doesn't leave much capacity for OS, application, and working file storage or your video editing and authoring work. As a result, most video production solution manufacturers recommend that users add an external 40GB+ hard drive with a rotational speed of 7,200-10,000 rpm. Fortunately, these high-capacity drives have become remarkably inexpensive.