What is Video Compression?

Video Compression is a necessary function of Recording Video and TV signals onto a Computer Hard Drive. Because raw Video footage requires lots of space, without Video Compression, Video files would quickly eat up gigabytes of hard drive space, which would result in only short amounts of Video or TV recorded onto the Computers Hard Drive. With Video Compression, smaller Video files can be stored on your PCs Hard Drive, resulting in much more space for Video files. In other words, Video Compression lets you store much more TV and Video on your Computer than if the Video files were not compressed.

The different Video Compression formats

There are several Video Compression formats in use today, including the most popular, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.

MPEG-1 is a low quality (think VHS on extended play mode) Video Compression format that is used for capturing video for various applications. MPEG-1 is used for capturing video to be played back in computer programs, such as Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, and for recording video to a CD-R or CD-RW (a VideoCD) disc.

MPEG-2 is the Video Compression format used for Digital Video Recorders and DVD and the quality is much better than MPEG-1. When creating DVDs on your own PC, this is the format to use for DVD discs.

Other Video Compression formats include, AVI, MPEG-4, DivX, Quicktime, Windows Media Video (WMV) and RealVideo (RM).

Using Video Compression
Most TV and Video Capture Cards and Capture Software allow you to capture your Video or TV using different Video Compression formats. For example, the ADS Tech DVD Xpress Capture Device allows users to choose between capturing MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Video files. The Video Compression format you choose to use depends on what you want your end result to be. Are you burning a DVD? Then you would choose MPEG-2, or if you want to create a video file for Video Email, you would use MPEG-1. You don't have to be an expert on Video Compression to make use of it, you just need to be aware of what kinds of Video files you need for your application.