Digital Commons at Penn State

This prompt comes up the first time the DVD player software is run on any machine. Because the Editing Workstations reset every night, this prompt will come up every time you try to play a DVD movie. America is REGION 1. Once you enter that your movie will play normally.

"Digital" means that the information is stored in a binary format, as a coded series of 1's and 0's. Thus, digital video refers to video stored in a binary format. Digital video systems can be used to transfer video from an analog videotape into digital format, make edits (like cuts, transitions, and special effects) output digital video files back to videotape, and compress digital video files for the Web, DVD, or CD. "DV" is a specific format of digital video. DV is the standard for video editing programs and most digital video cameras.

Capturing (or digitizing) video from a videotape or camcorder requires certain hardware. The type of hardware depends on what type of video the information is coming from. It is easier to capture video from a DV video camera than to capture video from VHS, Hi8, SVHS, Laserdisc, or other video sources. This is because the video stored in a DV camera is already in digital format and has a built-in computer interface. The video stored in the other formats is analog and does not have a built-in computer interface.

All Apple Macintosh computers built since 1998 and many newer PCs come with the hardware necessary to capture video from a DV camera. Capturing from sources other than a DV camera requires purchase of a D/A (digital/analog) media converter or purchase and installation of a video capture card.

When using a video capture card, the quality of video you can capture depends on the specifications of the capture card, the speed of the computer, and the speed of the disk drive.

Importing DV from a DV video camera, media converter, or other DV device requires the use of FireWire (IEEE 1394) cables. FireWire, invented by Apple, is one of the fastest peripheral connection methods ever developed. FireWire also often allows the user to control the playback device (such as a DV video camera) directly from the computer.

Today, a variety of digital video editing software is available for both PCs and Mac. Since most video software was developed on a Macintosh platform, digital video editing is primarily done on Macintosh.

Apple's iMovie is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward capturing and editing program for beginners. Apple's Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro are much more advanced editing tools, designed for video professionals.

For beginners, Pinnacle's Studio 9 or Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker are as close to iMovie as is possible on the Windows Platform. Adobe Premiere is another popular professional editing program used that has recently transitioned from the Mac to the PC.

Any Windows or Macintosh computer should be capable of playing video on the screen using programs like Quicktime, Real Player and Windows Media Player; no special adapter or hardware is required. However, faster computers with faster disk drives and more RAM will be able to play video back more smoothly.

"Printing" or exporting to tape involves taking files stored on a computer and making an analog video tape of their contents. This requires some type of converter, like a Sony Media Converter or the Dazzle Hollywood-Bridge, to take the digital signal from the computer and convert it to an analog signal that the VCR can understand. These are the same converters that were explained earlier in the "capture" FAQ

Video editing programs like Adobe Premiere, iMovie, and Final Cut Pro allow users to import most types of image files (TIFF, GIF, PICT, JPG) and incorporate them into video projects. With video editing software, the user can easily control the duration, motion, and size of the image on the screen. Image files as video clips are also capable of the same transitions and filters as any other video file.

Presentation files, like those from Microsoft PowerPoint, must first be saved as sets of individual images before they can be imported into a video editing program.

Many types of audio files can also be added to video projects as soundtracks.

Prior to digital editing, video editing was achieved through "linear editing." In "linear editing" the finished product is built as edit decisions are made. Therefore, if you were working on a 10-minute video and needed to fix something in the first 2 minutes, your new edit could throw off everything that came after it, requiring you to rebuild all the video after the new edit. With "digital non-linear editing" all edit decisions are made before the finished product is built. Editing this way allows the editor to test edits and preview the finished product before exporting the video to more permanent media.

"Digital camera" usually refers to a digital still camera; these are similar to 35mm snapshot cameras, except that they contain no film. Some digital still cameras allow you to capture short (under 30 second) clips of audio as well, and some can be connected to televisions in order to preview the pictures in the camera.

A "digital video camera" is similar to a regular camcorder or video camera, except that it stores the recorded video in a digital (as opposed to analog) format. This results in video which can be duplicated many times or copied directly into a computer without any additional loss of image quality.

A "DV camera" is a specific type of digital video camera that shoots in the "DV" format. This is the same format that editing software uses, therefore video on a DV cassette doesn't lose any quality when captured directly to these programs.

Most popular consumer DV video cameras use Mini DV tapes. Mini DV tapes capture the same fine-quality video as their larger industrial counterparts and are relatively inexpensive.

Record digital video in our studio or bring in media, such as on a VHS videotape, and edit it on our high-end workstations. Get help publishing video online, to DVD and to many other video formats.

We've put together this reference table to illustrate the amount of space a streamed video takes up on a server. Keep in mind that many factors such as the data rate, the length of video, and the image size can affect the overall size of the files and these numbers are meant for comparison only.

The following table, with the exception of full DV, is for Quicktime (.mov) video using the Sorenson compression format (web streaming standard). Full DV is used when editing video for non-streaming media, like VHS or DVD.

Since the computer has control over each pixel of each frame of every video clip, digital video allows for a wide range of special effects. These include adding titles (text), adjusting brightness and contrast, compositing (combining multiple images), and performing 2D and 3D digital video effects (DVEs).

Digital video also allows "nonlinear editing," which allows you to take parts of a video and paste them together in any order that you wish.

Try these Web sites:

http://www.videoguys.com/

http://www.dv.com/