| Understanding Video Formats |
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While DVD-video is a term often used to define a movie, in actuality there are several different formats of DVD disks that need to be understood in order to get the desired results when burning DVD's. Knowing the different DVD formats is vital to make sure that your burned DVD will play on your devices. So, to help you out we've put together this list of the terms you will come across when burning DVD. Video FormatsMPEG 1, 2, 3 & 4: Audio and video compression standards set by the Moving Pictures Export Group. The numerals refer to versions with MPEG 1 being the 1st and MPEG 4 being the latest. MPEG 4 is probably best known. The MP4 format is used commonly on MP4 players. MP3: This is the most well recognized audio format designed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group. It is a standard for audio files compression. WMA: Windows Media Audio is an audio data compression standard developed by Microsoft. It is played widely in many MP3 and MP4 players from China wholesale manufacturers. The video version of this format is WMV. DiVX: Another commonly recognized video format, its compression technique is to convert long video sequences into smaller segments thus with loosing too much quality in the video and audio. It uses the MPEG-4 compression standard mentioned above. XVID: This open source compression technique competes with DiVX for market share and also compresses video according to the MPEG-4 standard. The difference between the two is DiVX is proprietary while XVID is distributed under Gnu or is free to use. JPEG: This is format used for photographs and is used by most digital cameras. Having this lets the user playback pictures from the camera on the portable DVD screen. Disc FormatsCD: The shorter, better known nickname for the Compact Disc Read Only Memory (CD-ROM). A CD is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data which can be read by a computer and a number of other players but cannot be written over. CD-RW: This is a CD which can be recorded onto and read many times. The CD-RW can also be used to store different formats of content. This is a little like a blank VCR of the computer world. CD-R: A CD-R (recordable) allows for content to be written once and read many times. This type of disc stores all types of media files VCD: Short for Video Compact Disc is the format used for storing video on CDs. Unlike DVD that you can skip or play from a selection of chapters the VCD format limits on fast forward and rewinding of the video when played in most DVD players. SVCD: The Super Video Compact Disk. This is successor to the VCD format and was developed to challenge the DVD format. However it doesn't have the quality and storage capacity of the DVD and never really took off. DVD: Digital Video Discs. They look like CDs but store six times more data and can display and play video in chapters. DVD RW/ DVD+RW/ DVD-RW: Essentially three variations of exactly the same thing. A DVD RW is like a CD RW in that data can be read off them and written on them many times. The + and - and competing standards, though it is generally accepted that + is superior and therefore the industry standard for rewritable disks. Blu-ray: Also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience. |
