Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Toronto Video Editing - More on DVDs



DVD-Video discs require a DVD-drive and an MPEG-2 decoder (e.g. a DVD-player, or a DVD computer drive with a software DVD player). Commercial DVD movies are encoded using a combination of MPEG-2 compressed video and audio of varying formats (often multi-channel formats as described below). Typical data rates for DVD movies range from 3–10 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive. The typical video resolution for an NTSC disc is 720 × 480, while a PAL disc is 720 × 576.

All MPEG video must be 25 frames per second on PAL DVDs. On NTSC DVDs MPEG-2 video can be either 29.97 frames per second or 23.976 frames per second, (with 3:2 pulldown) while MPEG-1 video can only be 29.97 frames per second. Interlacing is only supported for MPEG-2 video on both PAL and NTSC DVDs. 16:9 anamorphic video is only supported at 720x576/480. Note that some DVD-hardware or software players may play discs whose MPEG files do not conform to the above standards- however these discs are non-compliant with the specification for DVD-video. Some hardware players will now play DVD-ROMs or CD-ROMs containing MPEG video files - these are 'unauthored' and lack the file structure that defines a DVD-video. (These files contain extra information, such as the number of video tracks, chapters and links to extra features, which DVD players use to navigate a DVD-video). (
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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Video Editing Toronto



History of the DVD:


In the early 1990's two high density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density Disc (SDD), supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM's president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.

Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows "push-pull" tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. The second modification was the adoption of Philips' EFMPlus. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba's SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to SD's original 5 GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.5, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996. In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum , which is open to all companies. (
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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

What is video editing? - Toronto

Video editing is the process of re-arranging or modifying segments of video to form another piece of video. The goals of video editing are the same as in film editing - the removal of unwanted footage, the isolation of desired footage, and the arrangement of footage in time to synthesize a new piece of footage.


Prior to the 90's video editing was done in linear style, using one or more video players and a separate video recorder to piece together the final video. Video editors used video controllers or mixing consoles to play segments of original footage out of order, blended, or modified by other equipment, with the result captured to a master video recorder.


Non-linear editing systems are computer-based. Footage is played into a computer and captured on a hard drive. Editors use software such as Adobe Premiere or Avid Xpress DV to manipulate the captured footage. Clips are arranged on a timeline, music tracks and titles are added, effects can be created, and the finished program is "rendered" into a finished video. The video may then be distributed in a variety of ways including DVD, webstreaming, CDROM, or tape. (more)